Preamble

The House met at Half past Two o'Clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE CORPORATION [MONEY]

Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to repeal Section 139 of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Corporation (General Powers) Act, 1935, thereby affecting the valuation for rating purposes of hereditaments in the City and County of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money to be provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to such first-mentioned Act in the money to be so provided for the payment of Exchequer Equalisation Grants under Part I of the Local Government Act, 1948.

Resolution agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions — GOLD COAST (OPHTHALMOLOGICAL SURVEY)

Mr. Leslie Hale: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what progress has been made with the ophthalmological survey of the Gold Coast, Nigeria and the Cameroons; when it is anticipated that preliminary information will be available; and by what date he hopes to report on the steps to be taken.

The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Oliver Lyttelton): A preliminary investigation of the incidence of onchocerchiasis in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast has just been completed. It confirms the need for the main survey which will start later this year in the Gold Coast and will take three years. The British Empire Society for the Blind will be responsible for this survey and the hon. Member may like to seek further information from them or to put down another Question at a later date.

Mr. Hale: I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. Is he not of opinion that, on the whole, there has been a fair amount of delay in the initiation and sending of this vital inquiry, which we certainly understood in this House was to be sent a few months ago?

Mr. Lyttelton: Preliminary action had to be taken well before the final survey arrangements, but we are getting on with it now.

Oral Answers to Questions — COLONIAL EMPIRE

Owen Falls (Hydro-Electric Scheme)

Mr. Hale: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what progress has been made with the construction scheme at the Owen Falls; and what is the intention of Her Majesty's Government with regard to the initiation and continuation of the schemes of land reclamation in the Blue Nile Valley.

Mr. Lyttelton: Work is nearly up to schedule. The foundations for the first two generating sites are almost completed and the walls of the power station are under construction. 15,000 k.w. from the hydro-electric station should be available by September, 1953, and a further 45,000 k.w. by the middle of 1954. The second half of this Question is within the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, to whom I suggest that the hon. Member should address it.

Mr. Hale: While appreciating the information given in the first part of the answer, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is aware of two considerations? First, is he aware that far too little publicity has been given in this country to this extremely important project and to its great value to Africa, and will he consider that? Secondly, is he aware that it is a little undesirable that the very important ancillary schemes of flood reclamation, and so on, which have never been discussed in this House at all, should be subject to another Department, and would it not be a very good thing, at least, if the whole of the original work were controlled and planned by one Department?

Mr. Lyttelton: In answer to the first part of the question, I should be very glad to see if publicity could be given


to the nature of this scheme. On the second part of the question, I would say that we are dealing with geographical facts. No part of the Blue Nile flows through colonial territory, and it is unfortunate that inter - Departmental boundaries are governed by geographical and not by economic facts.

Mr. James Griffiths: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider arranging a small exhibition in the Palace of Westminster, perhaps accompanied by photographs of this bold, imaginative scheme, so that Members can see what is being done, and convey the information to their constituents?

Mr. Lyttelton: Certainly.

Mr. A. Fenner Brockway: May I ask whether, in view of the tremendous importance of the "Century plan," which hinges on the Owen Falls scheme, the right hon. Gentleman can use his influence with the Foreign Office to try to secure that the present differences between Egypt and this country shall not hold up the completion of this scheme?

Mr. Lyttelton: That is quite a different question.

Banishment Without Trial

Mr. J. Grimond: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will abolish banishment without trial in those Colonies where this power still exists.

Mr. Lyttelton: The hon. Member will be aware that consultations on this subject have been going on with the Colonial Governments concerned. I am now considering their views and certain questions of policy which arise. I hope to be in a position to make a statement to the House within the next few weeks.

Mr. Grimond: Can we take it that these consultations are now entirely complete, and that the Secretary of State is favourably disposed towards the abolition of banishment without trial?

Mr. Lyttelton: In principle, I am in favour of getting rid of banishment without trial, but there are one or two important matters which arise in special circumstances, such as in Malaya and Hong Kong, to which I am now giving attention, and I hope to make a statement soon.

Development Corporation (Treasury Advances)

Mr. Roland Robinson: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies upon what terms and at what rate of interest the Colonial Development Corporation borrows money.

Mr. Lyttelton: Long-term Exchequer advances are made for periods of 40 years, repayment being by means of 33 annuities comprising interest and capital beginning in the eighth year. Interest is in accordance with the rate current for Government credit in redeemable securities at the time the advances are made (at present 4¼ per cent.) so calculated to take into account the fact that no interest will have been paid during the first seven years.
Short-term advances, which are given for periods of six months, similarly carry the current rate for such loans, which is at present 2½ per cent. Borrowing from other than Government sources is by private arrangement in accordance with usual commercial practice.

Oral Answers to Questions — RAIL COMMUNICATIONS, CYPRUS

Mr. P. B. Lucas: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies when it was decided to stop the operation of the railway linking Nicosia with the port of Famagusta in Cyprus; and what other rail communications on the island it is proposed to develop.

Mr. Lyttelton: The railway was closed on 31st December, 1951. There are no proposals to develop other rail communications in Cyprus.

Mr. Lucas: Is my right hon. Friend satisfied, in view of the strategic importance of Cyprus—an importance which may grow—that road communications in the island will prove adequate to the island's needs in the future?

Mr. Lyttelton: Before this railway was closed, the Chiefs of Staff were consulted, and they confirmed that it had no strategic value.

Oral Answers to Questions — WEST INDIES

Federation

Mr. Thomas Reid: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what progress has been made up to date towards West Indian Federation.

Mr. Lyttelton: The subject has now been discussed by all the Legislatures concerned except British Honduras and Barbados. The Legislatures, apart from British Guiana and the Virgin Islands, have accepted federation in principle.
The next step should be a conference in London. A copy of my despatch setting out detailed plans for this conference was placed in the Library on 27th February.

Mr. Reid: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if the West Indies are going on with the plans for a Customs union, or whether these plans for a Customs union have to wait on the larger question of federation?

Mr. Lyttelton: I think the Customs union will have to await the matter of federation. I do not know whether those discussions can take place simultaneously, but this is a germane subject, and the various Governments are now studying the matter with a view to this conference.

Mr. A. G. Bottomley: Is the right hon. Gentleman able to speed up this federation, and will he do me the honour of reading a paper which I wrote last year after visiting the West Indies?

Mr. Peter Smithers: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the widespread satisfaction caused by the recent announcement of further steps to enable the West Indian territories concerned to discuss federation, and of the hope of this side of the House that these discussions will have a successful outcome?

Queen Elizabeth's Nursing Service

Mr. Kenneth Thompson: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if his attention has been called to the distress suffered by members of the Queen Elizabeth's Colonial Nursing Service recruited by his Department for service in the West Indies as a result of the inadequacy of their salaries in face of rapidly rising costs of necessities; and what steps he proposes to take to remedy the position.

Mr. Lyttelton: I am afraid that it is true that in some cases the salaries of members of the Queen Elizabeth's Colonial Nursing Service in the West Indies are inadequate and that they have difficulty in making ends meet. The

Governments concerned know this and, where possible, are taking steps to improve matters either by means of cost of living allowances or general salary regradings. The amount that can be done, however, must of course depend upon the resources of the territory.

Mr. Thompson: May I ask my right hon. Friend if he will look again at the conditions under which these girls are living, in view of the fact that many of them are in an extremely unfortunate situation at the present time? Will he use what powers he has to persuade the Governments concerned to do more to make the living conditions of these girls tolerable?

Mr. Lyttelton: I am much exercised about this question, and will do what I can to help.

Mr. Bernard Braine: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, to judge from correspondence which I have had on this subject with the Minister of State, the dissatisfaction is such as to make it difficult to fill future vacancies?

Sugar Industry, Trinidad (Cost of Living)

Mr. H. Hynd: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what was the price paid per ton of sugar in 1949, as compared with the present price to the producers in Trinidad; and what increase has taken place in the cost of living in Trinidad during the same period.

Mr. Lyttelton: The price per ton of cane paid to sugar-cane producers in Trinidad in 1949 was 7 dollars 71 cents. The present price is 7 dollars 99 cents.
During the period January, 1949, to December, 1951, the cost of living index in the Colony based on 1935 as 100, rose from 227 to 251. This index has now been replaced by an index of retail prices with January, 1952, as 100. It at present stands at 104.2.

Mr. Hynd: Is the Minister satisfied that there is a proper relationship between the price of sugar, the cost of living and wages in this case?

Mr. Lyttelton: It is asking a good deal to ask if I am satisfied. What I am satisfied about is that very careful studies are made of the question, and I think the result is broadly correct.

Sugar Industry, St. Lucia (Strike)

Mr. W. J. Field: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will make a statement upon the strike among workers in the sugar industry in the island of St. Lucia.

Mr. Lyttelton: A strike of sugar workers on the Roseau Estate began on 11th March and spread to two other estates, affecting factories also. By 19th March the factories were again in partial operation and a number of estate employees were at work. A general resumption of factory work took place on 24th March. Except for two minor cane tires, there has been no disorder. The Governor has appointed a commission of inquiry to examine the circumstances of the strike and to make recommendations.

Rice Industry, British Guiana

Mr. R. Robinson: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what steps are being taken to develop the rice industry of British Guiana.

Mr. Lyttelton: Work has continued on plans referred to in the reply to my hon. Friend on 14th November last, and I hope to be able to report progress soon.

Mr. Robinson: Is it true to say that the original plan as sponsored by the Government of British Guiana was turned down by the Colonial Development Corporation because they felt it earned an inadequate rate of interest?

Mr. Lyttelton: I cannot say for what reasons the Colonial Development Corporation—

Mr. John Dugdale: Private enterprise.

Mr. Lyttelton: That is rather a flight of imagination in the case of the Colonial Development Corporation.

Oral Answers to Questions — KENYA

Inter-Racial Trade Unions

Mr. Fenner Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies to what extent under his Regulations inter-racial trade unions are permitted in Kenya.

Mr. Lyttelton: As far as I am aware, there is no provision in Kenya's legislation prohibiting such unions.

Mr. Brockway: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, last November, the secretary of the dock workers' union in Kenya wrote to the Government on this matter, and that he has not, up to this day, received any reply, although he has sent three further letters, and will the right hon. Gentleman inquire into the matter?

Mr. Lyttelton: The hon. Member wrote to me on 17th March, and on receipt of his letter I took up the matter, but I have not yet had an answer.

Evictions

Mr. Fenner Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been drawn to the eviction from Ndabani, Kenya Colony, of 500 Wakambas; if he is aware that Ndabani had been earmarked for the future needs of the Wakamba people; that the land has now been sold to the Harris Estates Limited; that the evicted persons have now been transferred to places like Mukueni, where a man is not allowed to have more than five cattle owing to the aridity of the land, or to the Wakamba reserve, which is one of the most congested areas in the country; and what action he proposes to take.

Mr. Lyttelton: I assume the hon. Member is referring to the recent prosecution of 63 Akamba families for illegal residence on the farm of Captain Harries, which resulted in a magistrate's order for their removal. This area was never earmarked for the Akamba. These families had for eight months repeatedly been warned to leave. After the prosecutions, they were given time to reap their standing crops and provided with free transport to the areas in which they have been re-settled. I see no reason to intervene.

Mr. Fenner Brockway: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, in view of the land hunger of many of the Africans in Kenya, he will now stop the further extension of the allocating of land to European settlers?

Mr. Lyttelton: That is a different question, to which I am not prepared to give an answer in general terms.

Sir Leslie Plummer: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies why members of the Kipsigi tribe were evicted from their land in Kenya; and if he will now take steps to return them to their land.

Mr. Lyttelton: No members of the Kipsigi tribe have been evicted from their land in Kenya. I assume that the hon. Member is referring to the eviction of certain illegal occupants of Crown land at Kimulot which was aliented after certain exchanges of land between the Highlands and the Lumbwa native land unit. All concerned, including the local native council gave their consent to this exchange, as a result of which the Kipsigis acquired about 17,650 acres in exchange for reversionary rights to 6,500 acres.

Sir L. Plummer: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the information I have is that, despite the court order in their favour, hundreds of these natives were forcibly evicted, that armoured cars and policemen were used to burn down their huts, and that their land was transferred to the African Highlands Produce Company? Will the Minister look into this matter again to see whether restitution can be made to them?

Mr. Lyttelton: I have already made full inquiries and the facts are as I have stated. I am satisfied that the natives have greatly benefited from the arrangement.

Mr. Rankin: In the course of his inquiries, has not the right hon. Gentleman come to the conclusion that there is tremendous and widespread dissatisfaction in Kenya on the land problem so far as the Africans are concerned?

Mr. Lyttelton: I am answering a specific Question and am not engaged in general remarks. The local native council, the Governor, the Legislative Council, the Native Lands Trust Board and the local land board all gave their consent to the exchange which is the subject of this Question.

Oral Answers to Questions — TANGANYIKA (CORPORAL PUNISHMENT)

Mr. R. W. Sorensen: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies by whose authority and by what officers corporal punishment is inflicted in Tanganyika; for what specific offences; by what instrument and by how many strokes this punishment is normally imposed; to what extent he has evidence of corporal punishment illegally employed; and what records there are of the legal infliction of this punishment on non-Africans including British during the past 30 years.

Mr. Lyttelton: As the answer is very long, I am, with permission, circulating it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Sorensen: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this is a Colony in which there is an excessive number of instances of corporal punishment, and, in view of the recommendation of the United Nations that in all Trust territories corporal punishment should be completely abolished, cannot we follow that example by implementing the principle in this Colony?

Mr. Lyttelton: I have also to take account of public opinion in the Colony concerned. If the hon. Gentleman will read my answer, he will see that a very large number of serious offences are at present covered by corporal punishment. I should have to be satisfied that it would be an advantage to have other and more severe penalties for some of these offences before I acted.

Mr. Sorensen: Does the right hon. Gentleman mean to suggest that Tanganyika is a more wicked Colony than any other Colony? If not, why is it that corporal punishment is being progressively abolished in other Colonies, but not in this one?

Mr. Lyttelton: I cannot go beyond what I have already said, and I ask the hon. Member to take a slightly more robust view of this matter.

Mr. Sorensen: Owing to the most unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise this matter on the Adjournment at the earliest opportunity.

Following is the answer:

Corporal punishment may be inflicted in Tanganyika on the authority of courts of competent jurisdiction, including native courts, or in the case of prison offences, on the authority of the Commissioner of Prisons. The relevant Ordinance does not specify who is to carry it out and I am asking the Governor what the practice is.

2. The offences for which it may be awarded to adults are as follows:
Rape.
Attempted rape.
Defilement of a girl under 12.
Attempted defilement of a girl under 12.
Defilement or attempted defilement of an idiot or an imbecile.
Robbery, or attempted robbery, with violence.


Any assault included in Chapter XXIV of the Penal Code of an aggravated nature by reason of the age, condition or sex of the person upon whom, or by reason of the nature of the weapon or violence with which, such assault shall have been committed.
Cattle stealing.
Indecently assaulting or annoying a female.
Acts done with the intention of maiming, disfiguring causing grievous harm.
Injuring animals.
Cruelty to animals.
Any offence in Chapter XXIX of the Penal Code which deals with burglary, housebreaking and similar offences, after a previous conviction of any such offence.
Defilement by husband of wife under 12.
Parent or guardian parting with possession of girl under 12 in order that she may be carnally known by her husband.
Procuring girl under 12 in order that she may be carnally known by her husband.
Procuration.
Conspiracy to defile.
Unnatural offences.
Attempt to commit unnatural offence.
Indecent assault of boy under 14.
Indecent practices between males.
Attempted murder by convict.
Disabling in order to commit felony or misdemeanour.
Intentionally endangering safety of travelling by railway.
Casting away, or attempting to cast vessel.
Destroying or damaging an inhabited house or a vessel with explosives.

Juveniles may be awarded corporal punishment for any non-capital offence under the Penal Code or any other offence ordinarily punishable by imprisonment.

Sentences of corporal punishment awarded by a native court are subject to confirmation by provincial commissioners who have instructions to confirm only sentences in respect of indecent assaults, assaults aggravated by the age, sex or condition of the victim or of the particular savagery on the offender's part and cattle theft.

3. For prison offences corporal punishment may be awarded for mutiny or incitement to mutiny or personal violence to a prison officer.

4. The instrument used is a rattan cane. No sentence of corporal punishment may exceed 24 strokes for adults, or 12 strokes for juveniles. I am not sure that these rules apply to sentences by native courts but I am asking the Governor.

5. There is, as far as I am aware, no evidence that corporal punishment is illegally employed. I have no information regarding infliction of corporal punishment on non-Africans during the past 30 years.

Oral Answers to Questions — CENTRAL AFRICA

African Congress, Nyasaland (Fund Collection Prohibition)

Mr. Fenner Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been drawn to the action of three provincial commissioners in Nyasaland in prohibiting the Nyasaland African Congress from collecting funds to enable that organisation to send a deputation to this country; and whether he will take steps to lift this prohibition.

Mr. John Rankin: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what steps he proposes to take to remove the restrictions which are being placed by the Government of Nyasaland on the activities of the African Congress in their collection of funds for the purpose of sending representatives to this country.

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies why the raising of funds to enable Nyasaland representatives to travel to this country is being restricted or prevented by official action.

Mr. Lyttelton: Several years ago some, but not all, native authorities in Nyasaland made orders prohibiting the collection of subscriptions from Africans in their areas without a permit signed by the provincial commissioner. Having regard to the numerous complaints and allegations which followed the collection of funds to pay for an African deputation to London in 1948, the Governor decided that provincial commissioners should not grant permits in the present instance. I see no reason to question the Governor's decision, especially since two of the three persons chosen by the Nyasaland African Protectorate Council to visit this country next month at my invitation in order to discuss the federation proposals are members of the African Congress.

Mr. Brockway: I have in my hand the minutes of meetings between the Chief Secretary and the Nyasaland African Congress, and, arising from that, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is prepared to fulfil the pledge which was given by the late Chief Secretary that unofficial as well as official African organisations should be consulted; and whether,


therefore, he will not place any obstacle in the way of a deputation coming to this country?

Mr. Lyttelton: I am afraid I have nothing to add to the answer I have given. These are matters of administration, on which some care must be taken.

Mr. Rankin: Would not the right hon. Gentleman consider what steps could be taken in order to make it possible for the African congresses to send their own representatives to this country to put their own case in their own way, apart from the official delegates?

Mr. Lyttelton: I think the attitude of Her Majesty's Government is that the Nyasaland African Protectorate Council is the right and constitutional body to consult on these matters, and this was also the attitude of our predecessors. It so happens that, as I have said, two of the deputation are also members of the Congress.

Mr. Sorensen: Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that this is a most unimaginative and stupid action, which will have a very bad psychological effect? In view of that fact, and of the right hon. Gentleman's sincere desire to remove, if possible, any impediments towards the presentation of the case of Africans, would he not consider the matter more sympathetically?

Mr. Lyttelton: I must make it quite clear that the Government are of the opinion that the spokesmen of African opinion in this case must be the Protectorate Council.

Mr. J. Griffiths: While agreeing with the Colonial Secretary that, on the scale of official consultations such as attendance at conferences, the right body is the African Protectorate Council in each of the two Territories, may I ask him whether he is aware that the African Congress in both Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia is a very influential political body, and that, when I was in the Territories last summer, I had meetings with the Congress, both in Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia?
May I ask him whether he does not realise that this ban on collections, which is virtually a ban upon the ability of the Congress to send delegates to this country, will have a very bad effect?

May I ask him seriously to reconsider the matter, and since the congresses want to send delegates here, as they are entitled to do, whether we ought not to put any difficulties in their way?

Mr. Lyttelton: I have said that this is a matter of administration into which I am willing to look. [Interruption.] Of course, it is a matter of administration, because very large malpractices arose over previous collections, and, naturally, care has to be taken to see that subscriptions are not made and afterwards used for purposes for which they were not intended. I am quite willing to look into the matter of administration again, provided it is quite clear that Her Majesty's Government think that these are the bodies with whom they ought to have official contact.

Mr. C. J. M. Alport: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this collection was in fact abandoned a week after it started, because of the lack of response among Africans in Nyasaland?

Oral Answers to Questions — RADIO-MALAYA (MR. ALEX JOSEY)

Mr. T. Driberg: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what were the reasons for not renewing the appointment of Mr. Alex Josey, of Radio-Malaya.

Mr. Lyttelton: Mr. Josey's contract was not renewed because the Malayan Governments decided that it was desirable to have someone fresh in the post. The Malayan Governments have made it clear that the decision in this case does not imply any reflection on Mr. Josey's personal integrity or professional ability.

Mr. Driberg: Can we take it from the concluding words of that answer that the right hon. Gentleman is satisfied that there was no foundation whatever for the allegations made in this House a fortnight ago that Mr. Josey was a man of known Communist sympathies and that the T.U.C. had protested against his appointment?

Mr. Lyttelton: I should not have paid a tribute to his integrity if I had thought he was working for the other side as well as for us.

Mr. J. Griffiths: Does the right hon. Gentleman share my view that during his period of office Mr. Josey contributed material which was a very important part of our work in Malaya?

Mr. Lyttelton: I think that some of Mr. Josey's broadcasts were very helpful.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL NAVY

Piracy, Far East (Suppression)

Captain Robert Ryder: asked the First Lord of the Admiralty what steps he is taking to suppress piracy in the Far East.

The Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty (Commander Allan Noble): Her Majesty's ships in the area concerned have instructions to protect merchant ships, and all practical steps to this end are taken in respect of piracy in accordance with Q.R. & A.I. Article 957.

Captain Ryder: Can my hon. and gallant Friend say whether there has been any increase in piracy in recent months?

Commander Noble: Yes, there has been some increase in piracy in the last few months, but although the war in Korea has strained our naval Forces in the Far East to the limit, we are doing everything we can to protect shipping.

Mrs. Jean Mann: Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman do anything to prevent piracy at home, namely, in respect of the food subsidies?

Food Bill Increase (Subsidy Reductions)

Mr. George Thomas: asked the First Lord of the Admiralty what increase he anticipates in the food bill for the Royal Navy, following upon the reductions in food subsidies.

Commander Noble: The actual price increases and effective dates have not been announced and, at present, I cannot give an estimate of the full increase in the food bill, except for bread and flour, the additional cost of which will be approximately £120,000 a year.

Mr. Dugdale: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman assure the House that there will be no reduction in sailors' rations consequent upon this increase in prices?

Commander Noble: Yes, I think I can give that assurance.

Shipbuilding (Steel Allocation)

Mr. Cyril Bence: asked the First Lord of the Admiralty what steps he is taking to increase the steel allocation to the shipbuilding industry, and to ensure a balanced production of dry cargo vessels and tankers.

The Civil Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Wingfield Digby): It is not possible to increase steel allocations to shipbuilders until improved steel supplies become available. My right hon. Friend has no power to influence the proportion of tankers and dry cargo vessels ordered by shipowners.

Mr. Bence: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there is growing under-employment in the shipbuilding industry due to the inadequacy of the steel allocation and that there is great danger of future unemployment? Will he take steps immediately to remedy the situation because, with rising costs, something will have to be done in respect of the proportion of dry cargo vessels to tankers? Will he take powers to allocate extra steel for that purpose, because, in view of the policy of Her Majesty's Government of reducing stocks in this country—[HON. MEMBERS: "Speech."] Will the hon. Gentleman increase the allocation of steel for merchant vessels because of the fact that while there is a policy of reducing stocks the merchant vessels which would be essential in an emergency are not being built?

Mr. Digby: My information is that under-employment due to steel allocations is negligible. If steel becomes available we shall, of course, take the earliest opportunity to look again at the allocation to the shipbuilding industry and give it as generous treatment as possible.

Thermionic Valves (Supply)

Mr. Harold Watkinson: asked the First Lord of the Admiralty what arrangements he has made for an increased supply of thermionic valves, in view of their increasing use in modern naval gunnery and radar equipment.

Commander Noble: The production of thermionic valves is planned by an inter-Departmental Committee, and I am


satisfied that all practicable steps are being taken to meet the requirements of the naval programme.

Mr. Watkinson: Will my hon. and gallant Friend keep this matter under review to make sure that an adequate reserve is built up, and perhaps to overtake am, deficiency in supply which may have arisen under the previous Government?

Commander Noble: Yes, Sir.

Gunnery and Radar Equipment (Maintenance)

Mr. Watkinson: asked the First Lord of the Admiralty if he will give an assurance that the present numbers of trained ratings are sufficient to secure efficient maintenance of modern gunnery and radar equipment under sea-going conditions.

Commander Noble: In view of the greatly increased demands on the Navy as a result of the Korean emergency and the international situation generally, there has been an increase in the number of units in commission. In consequence it has not been possible to provide full complements for all ships of the active Fleet. Nevertheless, I am satisfied that the maintenance of these types of equipment is generally satisfactory and that all possible steps are being taken to provide sufficient skilled ratings.

Mr. Watkinson: Is my hon. and gallant Friend aware that if one has a pushbutton Navy it is not much good if nothing happens when the button is pushed? Will he keep this matter under constant review, because under active service conditions there might be a grave deficiency in maintenance arrangements?

Commander Noble: I agree with what my hon. Friend has said, but again I repeat that, in spite of the dilution we have to accept at the moment, the standard of maintenance is generally satisfactory.

Oral Answers to Questions — PAINTED HALL, GREENWICH (SUNDAY OPENING)

Mr. John Parker: asked the First Lord of the Admiralty what are the dates during which the Painted Hall, Greenwich, will be open on Sundays this summer.

Mr. Digby: The Painted Hall will be open to the public between the hours of 2.30 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Sunday, 1st June, 1952, and thereafter each Sunday until, at least, the end of August.

Oral Answers to Questions — WIRELESS AND TELEVISION

North-East Scotland

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General what television reception tests for North-East Scotland have been made recently by his Department: and with what results.

The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. David Gammans): No such tests have been made by my Department. The B.B.C. has carried out tests from sites in North-East Scotland to see whether they are suitable for a television station. The results are being studied by the Corporation but for the present no work will be done on setting up a station.

Mr. Hector Hughes: Is the hon. Gentleman not aware of the tests made recently in Aberdeen, when the television station at Shotts was opened, during which test photographs of screen pictures were actually taken in Aberdeen, though they were blurred? Does not that indicate that, if strengthened, Shotts station might be used for sending television pictures to Aberdeen?

Mr. Gammans: That is not the Question the hon. and learned Member asked. If he cares to put that down, I will give him an answer.

Mr. Hughes: Is not the hon. Gentleman aware of the test to which I have referred? Is it not his business to know of that test?

Mr. Gammans: It has nothing whatever to do with the Question which the hon. and learned Member has on the Order Paper.

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General if he is aware that there is a demand for television facilities in the North-East of Scotland; and if he will reconsider his decision to postpone the proposed television station for Aberdeen.

Mr. Gammans: My noble Friend realises that there is a demand for television in this, as well as in other parts


of the United Kingdom. Provision of a station at Aberdeen was postponed by the last Government owing to defence and economic reasons and for the present he regrets that he cannot alter that decision.

Mr. Hector Hughes: Is the Minister aware that this should not be made a party question and a party answer of that kind given? Does the test to which I have just referred on the previous Question not indicate that the Shotts station could possibly be used, if strengthened, for television in North-East Scotland?

Mr. Gammans: It was not in the least a party answer. I have merely stated what is a fact.

Station, Alexandra Palace (Alternative Site Tests)

Mr. Frederic Harris: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General when a decision will be made that television broadcasting be transferred from Alexandra Palace to Crystal Palace; and when the date of such transfer may be.

Mr. Gammans: The B.B.C. is carrying out tests to try and find a suitable site for a new television transmitting station if they have to move from Alexandra Palace when the current lease expires in 1956. Several alternatives are being examined and it is too early to say when a decision will be made.

Mr. Harris: Does that mean that when the move does take place, studios will be entirely rebuilt on this new site?

Mr. Gammans: It is far too early to give an answer to a point like that.

Small Electric Motors (Interference Suppression)

Mr. Anthony Fell: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General when a committee will be appointed under the Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1949, to study the suppression of interference with wireless telegraphy caused by small electric motors.

Mr. Gammans: My noble Friend has recently appointed an advisory committee from a panel nominated by the President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers with the approval of the Council, to consider the requirements which might be

prescribed in Regulations dealing with interference with wireless telegraphy caused by small electric motors. As the list of members is rather long, I will circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

The list is as follows:

The Chairman of the Committee is Mr. J. R. Beard, C.B.E., M.Sc., M.I.C.E., M.I.E.E., Fel. A.I.E.E., and the members are:

Mr. L. Austin, M.I.P.E.
Mr. A. H. Ball, A.M.I.E.E.
Mr. J. I. Bernard, B.Sc., Tech. M.I.E.E.
Mr. N. R. Bligh, B.Sc. (Eng.), A.M.I.E.E.
Mr. J. S. Boyd.
Mr. A. H. Cooper, B.Sc.
Mrs. M. Courtney, J.P.
Mr. W. J. Edwards, B.Sc.
Mr. J. Flood, Associate I.E.E.
M. F. Gratwick, A.C.I.S.
Dame Caroline Haslett, D.B.E., Companion I.E.E.
Mr. H. J. B. Manzoni, C.B.E., M.I.C.E.
Major C. A. J. Martin, G.C., M.C., B.A., R.E., A.M.I.E.E.
Mr. W. A. H. Parker, M.I.E.E., Mem.
A.I.E.E.
Mr. E. L. E. Pawley. M.Sc. (Eng.), M.I.E.E.
Mr. G. F. Peirson, M.I.E.E.
Mrs. C. Renton Taylor.
Mr. V. A. M. Robertson, C.B.E., M.C., M.I.C.E., M.I.Mech.E., M.I.E.E.
Mr. W. A. Scarr, M.A.
Dr. S. Whitehead, Ph.D., M.A., M.I.E.E.

Station, Wenvoe

Mr. Tudor Watkins: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General what radius will the Wenvoe low-power television transmitter cover.

Mr. Gammans: The B.B.C. expects that the low-powered television transmitter at Wenvoe will provide a satisfactory service to Glamorgan, Monmouth, part of Brecknock, the greater part of Somerset and parts of the adjoining counties. But reception will be more liable to interference, particularly in the fringe areas, than it will when the high-powered transmitter comes into service.

Mr. Watkins: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General what studio facilities there will be for Wales when the Wenvoe television transmitter will be in full service.

Mr. Gammans: Television studios are not being provided outside London at present, but outside broadcasts from Wales will be included in the television programmes.

Mr. G. R. Howard: May I ask my hon. Friend whether he considers that this radius will include the county of Cornwall?

Mr. Gammans: That is another question

Oral Answers to Questions — POST OFFICE

Staff Dismissals

Mr. Albert Evans: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General the number of staff of his Department who, during the last three months, have become redundant and been dismissed; the number of those so dismissed who were within six months of completing seven years' service; and the amount of gratuity they would have received if they had been allowed to complete seven years' service.

Mr. Gammans: As a result of the policy of regionalisation pursued by successive Postmasters-General, the statistics asked for by the hon. Member are maintained locally and not at headquarters. To obtain them specially would entail disproportionate work and expense. The gratuity payable to temporary staff who have served for seven years or more is based on one week's pay for each completed year of service.

Mr. Evans: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that many of these people suffer from a sense of real grievance, that a number of them are widows who are in their 50th year and that the Postmaster-General has decided to dismiss them within weeks of their completing their seventh year of service? Would the hon. Gentleman reconsider this matter to alleviate the grievance which these people feel, and will he consider granting them a gratuity proportionate to their service?

Mr. Gammans: I can assure the hon. Member that no one has been dismissed within a matter of weeks of completing seven years' service, but if the hon. Member cares to send in particulars of any case, I shall be glad to look into it.

Mr. Ness Edwards: Do I understand the hon. Gentleman to say he cannot supply information because it involves sending about eight or nine letters to eight or nine regional controllers? Is that an adequate reason for not disclosing the facts?

Mr. Gammans: It is not a question of eight or nine letters to controllers—or

rather to regional directors, if I may correct the right hon. Gentleman—it is a question of applying to head postmasters, and that would require a large number of letters.

Terrington Committee's Report

Mr. Ness Edwards: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General if he has yet received the written observations upon the Terrington Committee Report; and if he can now make a statement as to his intentions.

Mr. Gammans: My noble Friend has received the written comments of some, but by no means all, of the interested staff organisations. He is obviously, therefore, not yet in a position to make any statement.

Mr. Anthony Marlowe: When considering this matter, will my hon. Friend bear in mind that the proper test of a free association of people who choose to join together in a union should be their own wishes and not the administrative convenience of the employers?

Mr. Gammans: That is a fact which will be considered when a decision is finally made.

Airmail, Cyprus

Mr. Douglas Dodds-Parker: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General whether he will apply the same postal regulations to Cyprus as to Malta, to enable letters to be carried by air for 2½d.

Mr. Gammans: I wish that this could be done but it would involve the Post Office in an estimated loss of £65,000 a year. I would, however, point out that the lightweight Forces letter can be sent to Cyprus for 2½d.

Mr. Dodds-Parker: Will my hon. Friend bear this in mind as conditions improve, with a hope that we might get back to the Empire airmail scheme of flat rate which operated before the war?

Mr. Gammans: Certainly, but I can hold out no hope that anything will be done in the immediate future.

Letter Post

Mr. Rankin: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General if he will accept letters, carrying a 1½d. stamp and posted before 1 p.m., for second delivery next day.

Mr. Gammans: No, Sir. Apart from the practical difficulties involved, the resultant loss of revenue would be prohibitive.

Mr. Rankin: Is the Minister aware that his noble Friend came to Glasgow three weeks ago and asked us to post our letters early in order to ease the peak problem? In view of the fact that he rejects my incentive, what other alternative has he to propose?

Mr. Gammans: The excellent advice given by my noble Friend has nothing whatever to do with the point which the hon. Member raised.

Sir Waldron Smithers: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General if he will, in order to economise in paper, consider issuing for inland post a form of letter without envelope as is used for airmail.

Mr. Gammans: Letter cards which do not require envelopes, as well as stamped postcards, are already available for use in the inland post.

Sir W. Smithers: Is the Assistant Postmaster-General aware that the airmail form has much more writing space than the existing letter card?

Mr. Gammans: I am aware of that fact.

Sir W. Smithers: Then why not do what I ask?

Armed Forces (Free Services)

Mr. R. E. Winterbottom: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General what is the estimated value of free services given to the Army, Navy and Air Forces for 1951–52.

Mr. Gammans: The estimated value of services rendered without payment to the Army, Navy and Air Force during 1951–52 is £9,216,000, made up as follows:



£


Army
2,901,000


Navy
1,650,000


Air Force
4,665,000

Mr. C. R. Hobson: In view of the repeated protestations of hon. Members opposite with regard to this practice, does not the hon. Member's noble Friend propose to alter the present procedure?

Mr. Gammans: That is under review at the present moment.

Second-Class Airmail

Mr. R. E. Winterbottom: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General what are the estimated financial results for 1951–52 for the printed paper airmail group; and what additional income is expected from the proposed increases.

Mr. Gammans: It is estimated that second-class airmail services (i.e., printed papers, etc.) will show a deficit for the year 1951–52 of £215,000. The estimated additional revenue for 1952–53 from the proposed increase in charges is £220,000.

Staff

Mr. Hobson: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General what limit has been placed on manpower in his Department for the following grades, namely, junior postmen, postmen and postmen, higher grade.

Mr. Gammans: No separate grade limits have been fixed, but present policy is to keep the total number of postal staff as close as possible to the level of those in post on 1st October last.

Mr. Hobson: In view of the availability of manpower in many areas where the postal services are not as efficient as they should be because of the shortage of labour in the service, cannot the hon. Gentleman approach his noble Friend with a view to altering the reply which he has given?

Mr. Gammans: I think my reply covers the point which the hon. Gentleman has in mind. While it is hoped to keep the total number the same as at 1st October, that does not prevent an increase in those areas where there has been a particular shortage of staff during the past few years.

Capital Investment Allocation

Mr. Hobson: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General what is the amount of capital investment for the year 1952–53 allocated to his Department.

Mr. Gammans: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) which applies equally to the Post Office.

Mr. Hobson: Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that his reply means that there will be a growing list of people waiting for telephones?

Building Programme

Mr. Hobson: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General what curtailment has been made, or is planned, in the building programme of his Department.

Mr. Gammans: We shall not be able to start in 1952–53 any of the new buildings originally programmed for that year—except defence works.

Mr. Hobson: Can the hon. Gentleman give any idea of the number of people who will now have to wait longer for telephones as a result of the reply which he has given?

Mr. Gammans: If the hon. Gentleman puts down that Question, I will endeavour to give him an answer, but it is not covered by the original Question.

Oral Answers to Questions — TELEPHONE SERVICE

Shared Line Obligation

Mr. J. Slater: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General (1) what classes of telephone subscribers are exempt from the shared service obligation;
(2) on what basis decisions are made to compel residential telephone subscribers to accept shared service.

Mr. Gammans: The only subscribers who are under obligation to share are new and removing residential subscribers since 1st January, 1948. This policy was announced in the House by the then Postmaster-General on 18th December. 1947, and 30th January, 1948, and is being continued by my noble Friend.

Rentals (Differential Increases)

Mr. Albert Roberts: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General why the proposed increased residence telephone rental goes up by £2 0s. 5d. in the London area, and by £1 8s. only in the rest of the country.

Mr. Gammans: Telephone rentals in the London area have always been higher than in other parts of the country. The differential increases to which the hon. Member refers are only reflecting that fact.

Mr. A. Roberts: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General why the proposed increase for shared exchange resident telephone service rental shows an increase for the London area of £1 1s. 11d. compared with 9s. 6d. for the rest of the country.

Mr. Gammans: Shared service is at present provided at a uniform rebate of 11s. 6d. on the annual rental for exclusive service. It is proposed to increase this rebate to £1 10s. 0d. from 1st July, 1952. The differences between the proposed shared service rental in London and those elsewhere will therefore be the same as for exclusive service.

Industrial Applications (Priority)

Mr. W. M. F. Vane: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General what priority is given to applications for telephones put in by branch offices of nationalised industries, and if he will give an assurance that the available lines are shared fairly as between these applications and those of private businesses.

Mr. Gammans: No priority is given to a nationalised industry simply because it is nationalised. The criterion for granting priority is that the industry concerned whether nationalised or not, is providing essential services to the community or engaged in re-armament or the export trade. Even so, only the essential needs of these industries are given priority.

Mr. Vane: Is my hon. Friend aware that it is widely believed in provincial towns that these lines are not being distributed fairly? Whereas many businesses which are carrying on important work have to wait a long time, a branch office of one of the nationalised industries has only to be opened in a town for a telephone to be put into every room forthwith. Will my hon. Friend look into this again and see what is the position?

Mr. Gammans: I shall be pleased to look into any specific complaints, but I hope the answer I have given will give sufficient publicity to the fact that the nationalised industries are getting no priority.

Mr. William Hamilton: May we take it that the term "nationalised industries" covers the Armed Services, too?

Captain J. A. L. Duncan: May I ask my hon. Friend whether, in his answer, he left out agriculture deliberately? Agriculture used to have priority and it seems from his answer that that is no longer so.

Mr. Gammans: I do not think the point raised by my hon. and gallant Friend comes within the ambit of the original Question. I was asked whether nationalised industries had any priority or not, and the answer is, "No."

Oral Answers to Questions — LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL

Lieut.-Colonel Marcus Lipton: asked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the decision to reduce the food subsidies, he will ask the Lord President of the Council to resign.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Winston Churchill): No, Sir.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: In view of the almost monosyllabic reply, may I ask the Prime Minister whether he is aware that by concealing and rejecting the very noble and very proper effort made by the Lord President to resign, he is flouting, if not tarnishing, the accepted decencies of British life?

The Prime Minister: I think the hon. and gallant Gentleman would be well advised to spare his breath to cool his own broth.

Mr. Douglas Jay: In view of the publication last autumn of a document called "Britain Strong and Free," will not the Prime Minister himself resign?

The Prime Minister: I think that question is also covered by my answer to the first supplementary question.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: In view of that very unsatisfactory answer, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter at an early date, and I hope that the Prime Minister will be here to deal with it.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

Ex-Miners (Release from Forces)

Mr. Hamilton: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Defence whether, in view of the increasing need for more miners, he will

consider releasing from Her Majesty's Forces all miners with not less than six months' experience underground.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Defence (Mr. Nigel Birch): For the reasons I gave on 5th March in reply to a Question by the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr. Fernyhough), I regret it is not possible to accept the hon. Member's proposal.

Mr. Hamilton: That reply was not very helpful either. Would the Minister not agree that a willing miner who is prepared to dig 300 tons of coal in a year is more valuable to the national economy than an unwilling soldier? Is he aware, further, that almost every week hon. Members on this side of the House are getting letters from men in the Forces who are able and willing to come back into the pits and dig that coal?

Mr. Birch: As the hon. Member is aware, there has been no change of policy under the present Government. He will appreciate that most of the men in question have had considerable service. Many are non-commissioned officers and they are very fine soldiers. We have to balance these two things against each other, and it is not our view that it would be to the national advantage to carry out the hon. Member's suggestion.

Mr. Hamilton: Would the Minister agree that where a man is a private and has been a private for some years and is obviously an unwilling soldier—and I have sent a letter to the Secretary of State for War which bears that out—if those facts are obvious will not the Government provide facilities whereby such a man would be able to come out and serve in the mines?

Mr. Birch: I do not think it is possible to make separate arrangements for noncommissioned officers and privates. Many have volunteered for certain engagements. One cannot say that because a man has been promoted he may not break his engagement, and because he has not been promoted he may.

Mr. Driberg: Would the hon. Gentleman bear in mind that the scheme which was in operation last summer for a short time did not apply to men then serving in Korea or the Far East, and will he consider re-opening the scheme, if only


on this limited basis, for men who were serving in the Far East and were not allowed to apply but who are now repatriated?

Mr. Birch: That is another Question. Perhaps the hon. Member would put it down on the Order Paper.

Widows' Pensions Scheme (Review)

Mr. J. K. Vaughan-Morgan: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Defence whether he will take the opportunity given by the recent review of State pensions to reconsider the ban at present imposed on the award of widows' pensions to the widows of officers of the three services who were 25 years or more younger than their husbands, and will relax this rule in favour of widows whose marriages have lasted for 10 years or more.

Mr. Birch: This rule, together with other features of the Forces' widows' pensions scheme, is under review.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF FOOD

Wheat

Mr. Archer Baldwin: asked the Minister of Food what is the tonnage of wheat necessary to provide flour for the present annual bread consumption; and how much of this wheat is home-produced.

The Minister of Food (Major Lloyd George): The present consumption of flour in all its forms requires at the current extraction rate the equivalent of six million tons of wheat yearly. About 62 per cent. of flour consumption is for making bread and the remainder for biscuits, flour confectionery and other farinaceous foods. Approximately 24 per cent. of the total wheat requirement is home grown.

Mr. Baldwin: Does my right hon. and gallant Friend not think that his attention should be confined to the purchasing of bread grain and that he should hand over the purchasing of coarse grain to the trade and thus save the enormous losses in bulk buying and bad storage which go on at the present time?

Mr. Baldwin: asked the Minister of Food to what extent the present importation of wheat and flour is sufficient for

the annual bread consumption; and whether he will now permit home-growers to consume their own wheat for the production pf bacon, poultry and eggs.

Major Lloyd George: About 76 per cent. of our present total requirements for bread and all other forms of flour usage is met by imported wheat and flour, and the balance by home grown. It is not possible in present circumstances to permit farmers to retain larger quantities of home-grown wheat for feeding livestock.

Mr. Baldwin: In view of the penalty which is imposed on wheat growers, who have now to provide a certain amount of wheat for the coarse grain ration, does my right hon. and gallant Friend not think it is time that rationing was done away with, and that there should be a free trade in grain?

Major Lloyd George: There is at present an obligation to hand over a certain percentage of feeding-stuffs; but if what my hon. Friend suggested came about it would simply mean that we should have to purchase more wheat, involving a very high dollar expenditure.

Mr. Harold Davies: Might I ask the right hon. and gallant Gentleman if he realises that a much more intelligent way of freeing trade would be to encourage as far as possible the further importation of coarse grain from Eastern Europe, whereby Western Europe could be helped? Will he suggest that the Government might consider sending a delegate to the Moscow economic conference on this issue?

Major Lloyd George: We are getting a large proportion of coarse grain from Eastern Europe now.

Bobby Calves

Mr. Baldwin: asked the Minister of Food whether he is aware that the price paid for what are known as bobby calves is hardly sufficient to encourage the producer to send them to market; and how much profit is made by his Department on the re-sale of these calves to butchers and meat-pie manufacturers in addition to the hide.

Major Lloyd George: There is no evidence that farmers are not sending to


market all the calves which they are unable to retain for further feeding. I estimate that the sale at present prices of meat and by-products from bobby calves shows a trading surplus of about 1¾d. a pound dressed carcase weight.

Sir Herbert Williams: Could the right hon. and gallant Gentleman inform us what is a bobby calf?

Major Lloyd George: It is one that is not suitable for further feeding on the farm.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL AIR FORCE

Aircrew (Commissioned Rank)

Mr. Spencer Summers: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he will alter the present system which requires that all those in combat planes shall hold commissioned rank.

The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Mr. George Ward): It is not our policy that all aircrew should hold commissioned rank. Pilots and navigators normally hold commissions, but air signallers, engineers and gunners are normally non-commissioned officers.

Mr. Summers: Could my hon. Friend say whether that answer means that there has been no appreciable change in the system from that prevailing during the last war?

Mr. Ward: Yes, Sir. There was a scheme introduced at the end of 1950 known as the probationary officer scheme, under which all candidates accepted as pilots and navigators became pilot officers on probation and were confirmed in their commissions on getting their wings.

Officers' Uniform (Issue)

Mr. Summers: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air if, in order to prevent waste, he will defer the issue of officers' uniforms until those for whom they are intended are actually commissioned.

Mr. Ward: No, Sir. Flight Cadets at Cranwell are the only members of the Royal Air Force who are provided with officers' uniforms before they are commissioned. If for any reason a cadet is not granted a commission, he has to return his uniform.

Mr. Summers: Is my hon. Friend aware that there are an appreciable number of cases in which, owing to the shape of the candidate in question, the return of the uniform in the state in which it was issued to him does not meet the case because it may be quite unsuitable to the shape of the next candidate? Will my hon. Friend, therefore, take steps to try to eliminate this waste?

Mr. Ward: The number of cadets failing to be commissioned each year is very small. It is only about 25. When returned, their uniforms are not reissued to another officer but are offered for sale at a reduced price.

Candidates, Cardington (Regular Engagements)

Mr. E. Fernyhough: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air how many Royal Air Force recruits were sent home from Cardington during the week ended 15th March because they refused to sign on for a longer period than three years.

Mr. Ward: Out of 803 candidates interviewed at Cardington during the week ended 15th March, 124 decided not to enlist on Regular engagements. The trades for which they were suitable, or which they wanted, were open only to men prepared to enlist for longer periods than three years.

Mr. Fernyhough: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, during the debate on the Air Estimates, he said there was no substance at all in the charge which I made? Will he now withdraw the accusation which he made against me and apologise for the language which he used?

Mr. Ward: Certainly not. I withdraw absolutely nothing.

Mr. Fernyhough: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that we shall know, in future, how much importance to attach to any statement that he makes?

Mr. Fernyhough: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air how many recruits called to Cardington during the week commencing 10th March were persuaded to increase their period of enlistment beyond the three years for which they originally signed.

Mr. Ward: Altogether, 120 candidates for the Royal Air Force called to Cardington during the week beginning 10th March decided to enlist for periods longer than the three years for which they had provisionally volunteered.

Mr. Fernyhough: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there is grave disquiet in the country about the treatment which these boys receive when they go to Cardington? Is he aware that some hon. Members on his side of the House, as well as hon. Members on this side of the House, have received letters complaining about this treatment, and will he now agree to carry out the investigation which I asked him to carry out when I spoke during the Air Estimates debate?

Mr. Ward: When these boys leave Cardington, each one is issued with a pro forma asking for his suggestions or complaints, if any. They are perfectly at liberty to put down on the form any complaints they wish.

Mr. R. J. Taylor: Is the Minister aware that it is wasteful to take these lads to Cardington and then send them back home because they will not sign on for more than two years?

Mr. Ward: When they get to Carding-ton they have to do certain trade tests, and they cannot be accepted if they do not pass those tests.

Mr. Fernyhough: In view of the unsatisfactory reply and the attitude of the hon. Member—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Mr. Speaker: Following a Ruling of my predecessor, I should remind the

House that in giving notice to raise a matter on the Adjournment, the only proper formula is, "Owing to the unsatisfactory nature of the reply."

Hon. Members: Withdraw.

Mr. Driberg: With great respect to you and your predecessors, Mr. Speaker, was not that Ruling in itself an innovation, since previously we were all allowed quite freely to introduce all sorts of pejorative matter into such intimations?

Mr. Speaker: I think that the Ruling was made because it was found that the introduction of what I called, the other day, objurgatory phrases led to a waste of time.

BILL PRESENTED

HOUSING BILL

"to increase the amounts of the annual exchequer, rate fund and county council contributions under the Housing (Financial and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1946; to enable contributions under section three of the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act. 1938, to be made in respect of houses occupied under contracts of service by members of the agricultural population, and to amend section twenty-three of the Housing Act, 1949, in relation to dwellings so occupied; to amend section seventy-nine of the Housing Act, 1936, in relation to sales and leases of houses by local authorities; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid," presented by Mr. Harold Macmillan; supported by Mr. Boyd-Carpenter, and Mr. Marples; read the First time; to be read a Second time Tomorrow, and to be printed. [Bill 74.]

Orders of the Day — CONSOLIDATED FUND (No. 2) BILL

Considered in Committee of the whole House, and reported, without Amendment.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."

Orders of the Day — TEXTILE INDUSTRY

3.32 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Greenwood: Last week 26 Maltese textile workers and a number of other European textile workers left this country to return to their own countries, to face, in many cases, a future of hardship and uncertainty. They went because they had become redundant in the textile industries of this country. Perhaps, nothing could symbolise better than that simple fact the change in the textile industries which has taken place in the past five years.
Five years ago many of us in the House were stumping Lancashire recruiting workers for the cotton textile industry, but those days of shortage of manpower have gone, and in the past few months the skies have darkened for hundreds of thousands of workers in the textile industries, not only in Lancashire but in all parts of this country. In the past few weeks groups of hon. Members on both sides of the House have been to see the Minister of Labour and the President of the Board of Trade to discuss the slump which has hit the textile industries with unparalleled suddenness.
I want to say that the Ministers have been most helpful. We have had a number of discussions, and I hope that both sides have benefited from the interchange of views which has taken place. But the situation has been deteriorating so rapidly that the Opposition felt that it was desirable to bring this matter on to the Floor of the House, so that hon. Members might have a chance of drawing the attention of the House to the plight of all our textile industries: for this is not a problem which affects only Lancashire or only the cotton industry but applies to many parts of the United Kingdom, and I hope that hon. Members will be able today to put the case for wool, rayon, silk, hosiery,

carpets, and all sections of the textile industry.

Dr. Barnett Stross: And pottery.

Mr. Greenwood: I do not think that even with the greatest stretch of imagination pottery could be included in the textile industries, but, no doubt, my hon. Friend will have an opportunity later, in the small hours of the morning, of raising the question which, I know, is of the greatest importance to him.
Mr. Lewis Wright, well known to many of us in the House, and President of Weavers' Amalgamation, announced on Monday that he believed that this week in Lancashire there would be 70,000 cotton workers wholly or partially unemployed—that is, between a quarter and a fifth of the total labour force in the industry; and he added that unless the rot were stopped 200,000 would be unemployed by the summer.
In Rochdale this week 26 mills are on short time. In the Oldham area 12 mills are completely closed and 62 mills, the remainder of the number in that area, are working only three or four days during the week. In the Rossendale Valley and Ramsbottom mills which remained open throughout the worst days of the slump in the 1930's are now closing.
In Bacup, two out of every three cotton workers have experienced partial or complete unemployment at some time since Christmas. In Haslingden every one of the 28 mills has had stoppages of various degrees of seriousness since the turn of the year. It is feared in Lancashire that almost the whole industry will close down for 10 days at Easter.
In those circumstances it is not surprising that last Friday the representatives of 300,000 textile workers in Lancashire met together and called for Government action, or that on Saturday delegates from a million workers in Lancashire warned the Government of the consequences of any return to pre-war conditions in the textile industry.
The truth of the matter is—and I think that we must face up to this on both sides of the House—that we have been caught up in a world slump in textiles which is affecting every textile producing


country. In the United States there is severe unemployment in the New England mill towns, and some mills have reduced their production by 50 per cent. In Canada for some months the mills have been working short time.
In the last three months of 1951 the textile crisis hit France, Holland, Belgium, and other textile producing countries in North-West Europe. In India production has been cut. In Japan the Government have recommended that production should be cut by 40 per cent., and already a cut of 30 per cent. has been effected. Indeed, one of the most alarming features for the people of Lancashire is the fact that this recession has come upon us at a time when Japanese competition has not yet made itself fully felt.
What the reasons for this recession are are not, I think, completely clear, but there are some features of the situation which, I think, are outstanding. One of these reasons was discussed in the United Nations Economic Survey of Europe for 1951. We are told in that that rising prices after Korea produced a buyers' spree in the early months of last year, but that did not last because people throughout the world waited for prices to fall. Retailers were unable to sell their stocks, and the order books began to feel the effect.
I think it is true to say that until world prices are stabilised the situation will remain as bearish as it is at present. It may take some little time to get a proper stabilisation of raw material prices, but I should like to see Her Majesty's Government taking action along international lines to see whether it would not be possible to stabilise the prices of raw materials used in our textile industries. That may take some time, but in the meantime there are other steps which I believe Her Majesty's Government should be able to take.
The first point I wish to put to the right hon. Gentleman is one which has been widely canvassed on both sides of the textile industry, and there is a most cogent letter in "The Times" today from Mr. Beddington Behrens on the same subject. What Lancashire wants to know is whether it would not be possible to expedite the placing of defence contracts with the cotton industry instead of doing it slowly and piecemeal as at present.
If only that step could be taken, I believe that it would go a long way towards getting the industry through the difficulties it is facing at the moment. I make this further plea to the right hon. Gentleman: if it is possible to help the industry in this way, priority should be given to those areas where virtually no alternative employment but cotton now exists.
During the past few years we have become so export-minded that we have tended to lose sight of the fact that over the last three years 75 per cent. of the total output of the cotton industry has been going to the home market. That means that the level of internal demand and purchasing power is a major factor in determining whether we have a high or low level of employment in the textile industries.
Perhaps at this stage I become just a little bit controversial, but it does seem to many of us on this side of the House that many of the things the Government are doing have the effect of cutting down effective demand; the present tendency is to inflate prices and to deflate purchasing power.
Last Tuesday, the day after the Chancellor of the Exchequer had wound up his "incentive Budget" debate, the President of the Board of Trade addressed the Drapers Chamber of Trade and told them:
The problem today is not so much one of producing goods. The problem is to sell them.
He went on to add:
I cannot whip the public into the shops or cajole them into buying.
I think we all welcome the very modest conception the right hon. Gentleman has of his responsibilities. It is true that he cannot force the public, but he can at any rate do something to make it easier for the trade to sell and easier for the public to buy. I do not think he is doing that, and I do not think the Government are doing that, because the more people have to pay for their food, fares, rent and rates, the less they have for buying clothing and household textiles. On top of that is the fact that the rising costs of fuel and transport, and the very doubtful Excess Profits Levy, are placing new burdens on the industry.
I do not think—and perhaps by this time the right hon. Gentleman agrees


with me—that the D scheme has helped very substantially towards solving the problems of the industry. It had a very cold reception indeed from both sides of the industry. I do not want to go into the technical objections which have been advanced, and which the President of the Board of Trade knows much better than I do, but I do want to make this very simple point. The effect of the new scheme has been to bring an increased number of textile goods into the range of taxation, and it surely a little ironical that a tax which was originally intended to be a counter-inflationary device to restrict consumption should be still applied, and even extended in its sphere, at the time when, in fact, the completely opposite tendency is in operation.
I urge very seriously upon the right hon. Gentleman that he should consider raising the D level very considerably indeed. Perhaps, if only as a temporary expedient, he might go so far as to advise the Chancellor to remove textiles from Purchase Tax liability altogether until the pipeline is cleared. The really important thing at the moment is to get those high-priced goods out of the pipeline, which are clogging it at the moment. Unless the right hon. Gentleman is successful in doing that, there is a danger of bankruptcies in the industry, a danger of growing unemployment and, perhaps most important of all, a danger of a dispersal of the labour force which has been built up with so much difficulty.
I was glad to see that Mr. Hasty, President of the Master Cotton Spinners' Federation, yesterday urged the importance of keeping in the industry those skilled craftsmen and skilled women who have done so much to contribute to the greatness of our industry, because if those people leave the industry we shall not get them back again. There is another effect, too, and that is that if there is this uncertainty in the industry we shall not get the school-leavers coming in, and the average age of the cotton industry today is probably the highest of any industry in the country.
Perhaps I might now turn to what I conceive as being the long-term causes of our recession. I think that they have an even greater significance for the industry than the ones to which I have referred. They relate, of course, to the restriction of the overseas markets which

are available to us. The principal cause of that is the development of textile industries in other countries. It is no good our closing our eyes to the fact that today other countries are producing textile products on a colossal scale.
Every textile producing country in Europe, with the exception of Austria and Czechoslovakia, has increased its total production of all kinds of textiles more than we have done in this country. In some areas there has been an increase of over 100 per cent. compared with before the war. What does that mean? It means two things. It means, in the first place, that those industries are able to satisfy the home demands of their own countries. But it means, too, that in many cases there is a surplus left over for export in competition with the goods which we are producing.
The same situation has developed outside Europe as well. In spite of the temporary recession in Japan, she has met with a fair amount of success in entering once again the African market. In Pakistan she has taken our place as the chief producer of textile goods. Nor do I think we should forget the Yoshida-Dulles Agreement, which was not only a grave diplomatic rebuff for this country, but was a step which may, in the long run, have a disastrous effect upon this country's economic structure.
India, too, has expanded her textile output enormously; new mills are being set up, and she is establishing her own textile machinery industry with the advice of British firms. I do not think that any one of us would begrudge anything that India can do to solve the tremendous problem of poverty that she has to face, and she is making progress. The amount of raw cotton which India will consume this year is twice as much as the average consumption of raw cotton in this country over the last three years. That is an indication of the enormous extent to which India has entered into the cotton markets of the world.
At the same time British companies, with British skill, British experience and British traditions, are starting textile industries in other countries. Lancashire firms are building mills in the cotton fields of Africa. The British Celanese Company, while it is paying off workers in this country, is creating a mill in Colombia, and so it goes on.
In those circumstances, with this enormous growth of competition with this country, it is difficult to see how our textile industries have been helped by the Commonwealth finance talks which the Government were hailing so recently as such a tremendous triumph of Empire co-operation. On the contrary, they seem to have aggravated our difficulties.
I have no wish, and I am sure that my hon. Friends have no wish, to criticise our good friends in any of the Dominions or to underestimate the difficulties they are having to face. I confess that I feel less inhibited about criticising our own Government. It is difficult to believe that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer took part in these talks he presented the case for British industry and British trade with that clarity which we normally expect of him. At the close of the Budget debate, the Chancellor used these words:
When the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bishop Auckland asks if there was any understanding that one sterling area country could cut imports from another, I say definitely, no. All aspects of this matter were considered, but we had no idea that that would necessarily develop as a result of our conference. …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th March, 1952; Vol. 497, c. 2057.]
It is difficult to believe that the talks could have been carried out under conditions of that kind, and it seems, reading between the lines in the Budget debate, that the announcement of the Australian cuts was to the Chancellor as much a surprise as the Yoshida—Dulles agreement was to the Foreign Secretary a few weeks before. There may, of course, have been some misunderstanding on the part of Australia. Whatever the cause, there is a heavy responsibility resting upon the President of the Board of Trade and his colleagues to secure some further alleviation of the damage which the cuts will do to our export trade and particularly to our textile industries. The effects of the Australian cuts on Lancashire alone will be a loss of £26 million during the year.
That is only part of the picture. The figures given in the "Economist" last Saturday show that the effect will be much more serious if all our textiles industries are taken into account. We may well lose £85 million of trade in Australia, £10 million in New Zealand and a further £10 million in South Africa. That

is a total of more than £100 million of export trade in the textile industries—one-fifth of our total textile exports last year and probably one-quarter of the amount we reasonably expected to export this year.
Surely the President of the Board of Trade now thinks that it is urgent to discuss with the various Dominion Governments something more than the administrative details which he told us in this House the other day he was prepared to discuss. This is really a matter of life or death to many firms in various sections of the textile industry.
In the Budget debate on 13th March I do not think that the President of the Board of Trade was a very happy man. Earlier the same afternoon, he had been asked about the proposals which he was going to make for mitigating the effect of the Commonwealth Finance Ministers' Conference. What did he say? In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Burke) he agreed very frankly about the extent of the damage to the Lancashire textile industry, and went on to say:
I am confident that the cotton industry will do its utmost to offset the effect of these restrictions by increasing their exports to other markets. …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th March, 1952; Vol. 497, c. 1557.]
Marie Antoinette and the cake were nothing compared with the President of the Board of Trade and the export trade. In what markets will the textile industry be able to expand? Incidentally, I think it is a very great pity that we should have closed the Government-sponsored British Export Trade Research Organisation at the time when its help was most urgently required. Where are the markets to which the President of the Board of Trade is to send our goods? Lancashire, Yorkshire and the other textile areas are wanting to know.
The President told us the other day that he was in constant contact with the Cotton Board on this subject. What was the result of that contact, and will he tell us today what advice the Cotton Board have given to him, and what hopes they can hold out of being able to expand into other markets from those which we have at present? Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman is contemplating that we can sell more cotton goods in the North American market. We have been trying to do that for the past five years, and we


have met with only moderate success. Unless the right hon. Gentleman works a miracle, I do not think that there is much chance of persuading the Americans to cut the tariffs on textiles which we want to send into the North American market.
The right hon. Gentleman no doubt noticed on Monday a suggestion in the "Manchester Guardian" that Canada will be increasing her tariffs to keep out textiles from other parts of the world. That will be another serious blow to our export trade. Perhaps the President has the South American market in mind, and maybe there is more hope of success there than in other parts of the American continent.
We are shortly embarking on negotiations with the Argentine for the supply of meat. They want to sell their meat, and we want to sell our wool and textiles. Does the right hon. Gentleman intend to see, in the course of these negotiations, that the claims of our textile industries are not once again overlooked?
It may be that the President, too, has his mind centred on East-West trade. We know that the Secretary for Overseas Trade has been taking part in discussions in Geneva on this very problem, and it may be that the President will tell us what impressions he has formed as a result of these discussions, and what prospects he can hold out of selling our textiles behind the Iron Curtain.
There is another considerable outlet for our exports and that is provided by those backward areas which will benefit from an enthusiastic application of the Colombo Plan. I believe that certain aspects of that plan are shortly to be discussed in Karachi. It has been suggested in various sections of the trade Press that perhaps it would be a good thing for the Japanese textile industry to be able to expand into South-East Asia, and some such expansion may be necessary, but will the President of the Board of Trade assure us, when he speaks later, that he will see that the interests of the United Kingdom are protected during these discussions?

Mr. Walter Fletcher: When discussing the backward areas, will the hon. Member remember that they are already heavily over-stocked, without exception, with textiles which cannot be absorbed at the present time?

Mr. Greenwood: I do not think that that is strictly relevant. The reason that they cannot be absorbed is because of the lack of purchasing power in those countries. If we had an effective application of the Colombo Plan it would automatically result in an increase of purchasing power in those countries.
If the Government cannot give us encouraging news on these points, perhaps they will tell us what their views are on the future of the cotton and rayon industry. Already, the number engaged in the industry and its total output are only a fraction of what they were before the First World War. We want to know whether that shrinkage will continue. Do the Government believe that the time has come when we should begin to concentrate our industry, let our labour force run down, and plan our output on the basis of potential long-term demand?
These are points which strike at the very root of the problem and which the President cannot afford to neglect in his discussions with the textile industry, because so long as there is uncertainty about the future he will have skilled labour drifting away and young labour refusing to come in. The Minister of Labour has said on this point that it is not the intention of the Government to run down the cotton industry and to create unemployment in order to man the arms industry.
All of us gladly accept the assurance of the right hon. and learned Gentleman on that point. At the same time, a serious problem does arise. In some areas there is a most unhealthy lack of industrial balance. Figures which I obtained yesterday from the Ministry of Labour through the research department in the Library show that in Haslingden and Nelson 66.5 per cent. and 67.5 per cent. respectively of the working population are engaged in the cotton industry.
Whole villages in North-East Lancashire are virtually dependent upon the prosperity of a single mill engaged in cotton. In whole areas there is virtually no alternative employment open to the people, and unemployment in those districts, however it is caused, is a terrible infliction, as thousands of people learnt in the depression of the 1930's.
Those areas need new industries, and I hope that the President of the Board of Trade will give us an assurance not only


that the Government will place no obstacles in the way of new industries going to those areas, but, also, that he will go further and actively encourage alternative industries to go to the textile areas where a danger of redundancy exists.
In conclusion, I hope—and I hope with all my heart—that I have not stated the position and the problems of the industry in exaggerated terms. We do not want defeatism and we do not want empty optimism. It is a time when the textile industries and their representatives in this House need both clear heads and stout hearts.
I believe that the industry is today looking to this House for a lead, and we are certainly hoping to hear from the President of the Board of Trade what policy Her Majesty's Government intend to pursue. Surely all of us are united in wishing for the prosperity of these vital industries and of the men and women who labour in them. I pray that they and we may not be disappointed today.

4.2 p.m.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Thorneyeroft): I welcome this debate. I think that it will be all the more useful for the speech by the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood), which was a reasoned and balanced speech upon a serious subject. If I can, I certainly hope to keep the debate upon the level on which it has been started.
It is, after all, the task and responsibility of the House of Commons to draw attention to whatever happens to be the storm centre of the moment, and no one would have any doubt that many of our problems today are focused upon the textile industries which we now have an opportunity of discussing. I suppose that from a Governmental point of view no moment is ever ideal for a debate, for some plans have not yet reached fruition and others are still under discussion, and, in a sense, a debate can only photograph an industry at a certain moment in time.
Nevertheless, this debate is well timed. It comes at a critical moment in the fortunes of the textile industry, and hon. Members on all sides of the House will have an opportunity of elaborating freely and frankly on this problem as they see

it both nationally and in their own constituencies.
Textile policy covers a vast field, and I cannot cover the whole of it, but I can set out the facts as I see them, I can give some account of the actions which have already been taken, and I can say something of the problems—there are many of them—that still remain to be faced. I do not seek to—nor could I—give all the solutions to the many problems of the textile industry. As the hon. Gentleman very fairly stated, some are indeed imperfectly within the control of any Government—but I can indicate the scope of the discussions which are taking place and our general approach to the matter.
Many hon. Members are well versed in the background to these problems and the turbulent history of these industries. They have brought much in the way of riches to this country and also, very often, much in the way of poverty. They still retain a great deal of the fierce individualism which inspired them in their early days. Twice, at any rate, the cotton industry has been the stage of a great struggle in world trade. Once was in the 1770's when Hargreaves, Arkwright and Crompton invented the spinning jenny, the power spinning frame and the mule, and enabled this country to sweep into and dominate the markets of the world, until, in 1913, our cotton exports reached the great total of no fewer than 7,000 million yards.
The second stage of that struggle, with the cheap labour of Japan and the rise of domestic industries in other countries, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, reversed in two or three decades the advantage which we had won and held for 150 years. I only want to say about that that the history of those events is not simply recorded in the dry statistics of the Trade and Navigation Accounts, but is written deeply in the hearts and homes of many families in Lancashire, and it is right that we should bear that in our minds when we deal with this problem today.
I now turn to the situation as it has developed. During the last war these industries were concentrated so that the maximum use could be made of the labour and the limited materials which were available. Many whose normal


occupation was the manufacture of textiles turned to the sterner tasks which the national need at that time demanded. When peace came, the textile industries flung themselves with enthusiasm into the job of rebuilding the economy. Hon. Members on all sides will remember the efforts which were made to collect again the labour force of the textile industry and to attract women and girls back into the mills.
There was an immense opening. The world was hungry for goods which it had been denied for many years, and it was a world from which Japanese and European competition was still virtually absent. It is worth recalling that the men who faced those difficulties and seized those opportunities are the men who are facing the problems in the textile areas today which the hon. Gentleman so fairly described. We owe them a lot.

Mr. Ellis Smith: And the women.

Mr. Thorneycroft: And the women.
The picture of a post-war boom which I have been describing has now changed. There is today a world-wide recession in the textile and clothing industries, and the United Kingdom is sharing in that recession. It is to be emphasised, as the hon. Gentleman very fairly emphasised it, that this is a world-wide problem. Japan is hit. America is hit. Japan has cut back her production. There is unemployment in the textile industries in America. As the "Manchester Guardian" put it this morning:
There is no easy Socialist solution; there is no easy capitalist one.
That is the simple truth of the situation which confronts us.
The recession might have started earlier but for certain events, on which I should just like to touch. The House will remember that early in 1951 America started buying heavily for the stockpile, in particular wool. Wool prices soared. The price level of the wool clip in Australia rocketed and reached record figures. The purchasing power thus injected, and injected particularly into the Australian economy, provide a last-minute artificial stimulus to the post-war boom.
By March, 1951, the public all over the world, with the thought of Korea in their minds, were buying feverishly, with the fear of war-time shortages and of still higher prices ever present to them. During the same period there was the same intense demand not only for wool but for cotton and for rayon. By the early summer of last year, the world market was saturated with wool textiles, and by the autumn the trade recession had spread to cotton and to rayon. Buyers had stocked up and were holding off in expectation of even lower prices in a falling market. These events were taking place not only in our economy but throughout the economies of many other countries.
That was the situation which confronted me when I assumed my responsibilities at the Board of Trade. I want to describe some of the steps which I then took and proceeded to take in the months that followed, not because they were of any major importance or were decisive in their effect, but because I think it is right to follow this story out in chronological order.
The first problem that confronted me concerned the purchase of the raw materials of the cotton industry. It is of very great importance that a manufacturing industry should be able to obtain its raw materials on terms at least as favourable as those of its principal competitors. It can be, or might be, possible on a sellers' market to sustain some handicap of this character at the start. A multitude of handicaps can be obscured upon a sellers' market, but when the sellers' market turns into a buyers' market, handicaps of this kind become of paramount importance. This view, I notice, is shared by hon. Members of the Liberal Party, who have upon the Order Paper a Motion connected with this matter.

Mr. Ellis Smith: That is all wrong.

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am not discussing its merits.
The problem which confronted us was not made any simpler by the shortage of dollars, which restricted then and still restricts the amount of cotton that we can buy from the United States. The House will remember that the Minister of Materials and I appointed a committee under Sir Richard Hopkins, with the


terms of reference that they were to consider and report to us how, in the current foreign exchange position,
cotton could best be supplied to the United Kingdom cotton industry on the most advantageous terms as to quality and price.
I am pleased to say that the committee have tackled this job with great energy. They have made considerable progress, and I hope to receive and to publish their report quite shortly. I think the House will wish to take an opportunity, when it has the report in its hands, for a discussion of what is one of the most important aspects of this matter.
The second problem that confronted me concerned prices. The House will observe that I am dealing with these matters in the order in which they occurred. I am now talking of November of last year. It became apparent to me then that price control upon a falling market was contributing to some extent to the set-back in the textile and clothing industries. Goods manufactured from high-cost materials were held in stock. They could obtain few purchasers. Goods made from low-cost material were banked up behind them. Traders were being permitted to charge for utility goods only cost, plus a permitted margin of profit. There was no power to average between low-cost-material goods and high-cost-material goods. For some considerable period, complaints had been made that these arrangements constituted a block at what I might call the "exit" end of the industry.
In those circumstances, I gave instructions that the averaging of prices should be permitted. Although events have marched beyond this stage, it is worth while stating for the record that the size of the operation involved in giving even that measure of liberty to the traders required no fewer than 22 Orders dealing with the utility maximum price system and 303 pages of Orders, with their schedules—I understand that this time they were not related but were unrelated schedules. So complex was the machinery that had grown up that it took three months for the calculations of the new prices and the printing of them to take place, to do the simple job of enabling traders to average prices.
If I am asked why I did not then scrap the lot, the answer is that the whole of

the machinery was inextricably bound up with the old utility scheme, many of the specifications of which were based on price control. Price control had therefore to be continued until an opportunity could be taken of dealing with the old utility scheme. These events impressed very clearly upon my mind the need to cut through this administrative tangle at the earliest possible opportunity, quite apart from what was told me in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and to which I shall come in a moment.
Shortly after this decision, I had an opportunity of visiting some of the textile areas in those two counties, and of discussing on the spot what, at that time, they considered to be the main problems confronting them. I do not propose to discuss at great length the D scheme—I am not in any way inhibiting other hon. Members—on which we have already had quite a long discussion during the Budget debates. We shall have further opportunities of dealing both with the D scheme, and with the Purchase Tax generally connected with it, in the course of the Finance Bill, particularly on the Committee stage.
However, it would be right for me to say that when these problems were being discussed, the greatest possible stress was laid on getting rid of the rigidities and frustrations of the old utility scheme. This step was held out to me by both sides of the cotton and woollen industries, by trade unions as well as by employers, as the one step which the Government could take to assist the textile industries. Indeed, it was impressed upon me that the matter was one of such urgency that it really could not wait for what, at that time, would be the ordinary date of the Budget, April of this year.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: Could the right hon. Gentleman, in his enlightening of the House, now change from the passive voice to the active voice and tell us who made the statement? Many of us have received a very different impression of what took place.

Mr. Thorneyeroft: The statement was made by many people. It was impressed upon me by the Wool Textile Delegation, by the Cotton Board, on which there are representatives from both sides of the industry, who were united on this matter, and by the Rayon Federation. It


was put to me, not as a matter that would brook delay but as one of great urgency.
I believe that the arguments advanced at that time were well founded. Certainly, no alternative solution has been seriously put forward or seriously argued inside or outside the House of Commons that I have heard. It would be a pity if anyone at this stage tried to turn what is an essential reform of the old utility scheme into a scapegoat for the far wider and deeper problems confronting the textile industry at the present time.
I have mentioned these matters because it is right that the House should understand the order in which these problems presented themselves. Having said that, I want to repeat something which I said in the North three months ago. I said then that even if the Government did everything that was asked of them; even suppose they did all they should about averaging prices, about dealing with the problems of the old utility scheme; even if they improved the existing methods of buying cotton, there would be a vast range of problems of immense complexity confronting the textile industries which, if they were to be solved, would have to be grappled with not only by the Government but by the branches of the industry themselves.
Indeed, it seems to me that in some sense the matters of which I have been speaking so far, and which I was discussing with those people, important though they are, are marginal to the main problems confronting the industry. If they were left alone and unsolved and allowed to accumulate, they would do great damage to the industry, but even their solution, if it be possible, leaves many matters for further and urgent consideration. I therefore turn to the situation as I see it now.
As the hon. Member for Rossendale very fairly said, unemployment has been growing in the textile towns. I am anxious neither to overstate nor to understate the size of the problem which that creates. The fact is that in the textile industries unemployment, measured statistically, amounts to some 5 per cent. compared with rather less than 2 per cent. for industry as a whole. But in saying this, let me add that in my judgment and that of my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Labour, the figures, on the

whole, probably tend to understate rather than to overstate the problem. Probably there is more short-time working than is disclosed in these figures and some married women are not included—to take two examples of the way in which figures do not necessarily give a perfect picture of what is happening.
Moreover, it is not possible to treat of the textile industry as a single whole. All these statistics inevitably cloak wide differences between one town and another and between one area and another. Again, to give but one example, unemployment is often clearly worse where there is very little diversification or other industries to go to.
These, then, are the problems that confront us: a world-wide decline in demand, the emergence of a buyers' market, the problems of competitive efficiency and an increase in unemployment. And these are the problems on which we are now engaged. For example, I had arranged some time ago for further detailed discussions to take place between the Cotton Board and myself upon these matters. I do not intend, nor would it be right, to state in advance of these discussions what precisely I consider all the answers should be. However, I can state our general approach to some of the problems which must be raised.
I do not think that I should be avoiding the responsibility of Government if I said that a large measure of responsibility for future action must inevitably rest upon the shoulders of industry itself. It is not part of the duties of Government to outline in detail the managerial and technical problems concerned with increased productivity. There is a mass of papers and blueprints upon that subject, but the truth is that if Yorkshire and Lancashire textiles are to hold or gain foreign markets—and I do not underestimate the problem which the hon. Gentleman put—they must make the most efficient use of all their resources, of labour, management and equipment.
We should be quite clear about the size of the problem which faces us. The Australian cuts are very present in our minds but, in a sense, they are only one example of what is a much wider problem, about which I will say a word in a moment. Since the hon. Gentleman referred to them, let me say this about the Australian cuts: it seems to me that


where there are two Governments, one of which feels that it must take upon itself the unenviable task of cutting imports, and the other of which has the unenviable role of having the cuts imposed upon it, both Governments inevitably come under attack. The worst thing that could happen would be for Canberra and London to start trying to blame each other. Whatever our difficulties, it is worth remembering that, in the last resort, we face a common problem.
May I say, in answer to what the hon. Gentleman said, that, for our part, we have always made it demonstrably clear that we wished, if it were in any way possible, for Commonwealth countries to avoid cutting imports and exports between each other. Equally, the size of the problem which confronted the Australian Government is demonstrably plain. We have drawn their attention not only to details but, in the clearest possible terms, to the impact of their action upon the consumer industries of this country. We shall, of course, follow up that broad approach with detailed instances which are drawn to our attention by individual firms or industries affected.
The action of the Australian Government was a cut imposed by one country in an emergency. What we have to face also is the action of many Governments all over the world. The hon. Gentleman put this point to me very fairly. During the time I have been at the Board of Trade I have had an opportunity of studying what has happened to some of the old-established traditional markets of the textile industry. For example, in 1938 we exported 98 million square yards of cotton piece goods and 12 million square yards of wool piece goods to Argentina. In 1951 we sent less than 1 million square yards of cotton and 0.1 million square yards of wool.
I will not weary the House with lots of figures, but hon. Members who know this field well will bear me out when I say that the same kind of picture can be repeated in one traditional market after another throughout the world. Let us, therefore, be under no illusions as to the difficulties of breaking down these obstacles to trade imposed by foreign countries.
Since I have been at the Board of Trade I have given instructions—I gave

them soon after my arrival—that the highest consideration should be given in all our trade negotiations to the problem of seeking to open out in any way possible markets for the textile industry. I might add that it should be remembered by those who sometimes urge us to restrict first this import and then that, on the grounds that in a very tight emergency they are not absolutely essential to bare existence, that if we do cut other people's imports they are very liable to cut ours, and they are very liable to cut British textiles, particularly the high grade British textiles in which this country excels.
However strenuous any British Government might be in these matters, the fact remains that we shall face very considerable difficulties in these restrictions. We are a long way from the days when we used to make piece goods for Brazil, India, China and the Far East, buying their raw materials and manufacturing these articles here. These countries manufacture their own. Indeed, one of the great problems which confront us is not so much competition from third parties, but that the country to which we have been exporting has itself set up its own textile industry and is prepared to supply its own market. It is common knowledge that one of the first actions of an agricultural community is to try to manufacture its own textiles and its own garments.
There is one type of competition about which I am anxious to have special further discussions with the Cotton Board—I have told them of this—and that concerns competition from Japan. I want to talk on two aspects of it—competition in the colonial markets and the import of grey cloth into Lancashire. As to the imports into the Colonies I would say first, that they are, of course, limited by quota, like imports from other countries, on balance of payments grounds. Also, they are lower than they were pre-war, but, as the hon. Gentleman has said, they constitute a very potential danger for the future.
Second, quite apart from the complexities of the Congo Basin Treaties, which those who are familiar with this field know so well, if Lancashire is to hold a substantial share of the colonial markets, that can only be done if she can produce at prices at least not too far


removed from those which are available in other quarters. I have also asked the Cotton Board to give me their considered view about this vexed question of the import of Japanese grey cloth.

Mr. Leslie Hale: I should be obliged if the right hon. Gentleman would say a word about the Congo Basin Treaties. I would remind him of the Anglo-French Treaty which relates to free imports into Nigeria: that was denounced in 1936. There was also the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1871, which applied to the Gold Coast. Why are some of these treaties always permanently inviolable, whereas all other trade treaties which are not to our advantage seem capable of being denounced?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The legal position is in such doubt that it is very much better not to embark in an impromptu answer upon an analysis of what it is. I do not wish to avoid the hon. Gentleman's question, but, while I recognise that these difficulties are there, I would prefer in this speech to concentrate on the practical problem of filling that market.
On this question of grey cloth, I know that opinion is deeply divided in Lancashire. On the one hand, it is said, with some justice and conviction, that if Lancashire's full production has not been taken up grey cloth should not be imported. On the other hand, it is said that if we import it, it at any rate keeps the finishing end of the industry in full employment, and, indeed, it has provided a basis upon which the colonial markets so far have been largely held.

Mr. W. A. Burke: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how the finishing industry will have more employed in finishing foreign cloth than in finishing Lancashire cloth?

Mr. Thorneycroft: This cloth is used by the finishing industry to turn into products for the colonial market. I did preface my remarks by saying that opinion is deeply divided on this subject. What I can say is this—and I think the House might be interested to hear it. I understand that there are considerable stocks of grey cloth at the present time, and for the present, at any rate, I do not intend to issue any new licences.
There is one other matter to which I should like to refer, and that is the question

of diversification. As I have already said, the textile industry in the post-war world seized upon the opportunities in those markets and it was decided at that time—I am not criticising the decision; I am just stating the facts—not to detract from that effort which was so valuable to our economy by seeking to diversify the industry. No doubt, there were powerful arguments for that decision at the time it was taken. There was, after all, a considerable labour shortage in the textile areas. My own view is that there is some danger in any area becoming so dependent upon any industry that there is likelihood of large-scale unemployment in the event of a falling off in the demand for its products.
I want to make it plain that I am not implying that the textile industries have failed. What I recognise is that we live in a constantly changing world, and, if it is in any way possible, it is wise in that world to have facilities for taking up some of the slack at times of low demand. I am not trying to define the future level of the textile industry—although the hon. Gentleman has asked me to assess it, and I do not blame him for doing so. But I think it would be a bold man who, amidst all the imponderables of today, sought to say that he could see a little into the future and say exactly what size these industries were going to settle down to.
In addition, new factories cannot spring up overnight. There are severe limits on steel and building capacity. I do not want to hold out any hopes of actions that can be taken. I will say that, within the stringent limits within which we necessarily live, applications by firms for new capacity will be considered sympathetically in this as in other areas faced with this kind of problem, and certainly we shall encourage firms to use vacant premises where the great practical difficulties of taking them over can be solved.
The hon. Gentleman asked me a number of questions which I would like to answer. He asked me particularly about contracts. I think that we have to look at this question of Government contracts in perspective. It would be wrong to overrate what can be done by placing Government orders. It is wrong to hold out high hopes which would be only disappointing in practice. The quantities of


textiles needed for the whole re-armament programme are small in relation to the total capacity of the industry. In cotton, they are the largest, but for the whole four years' programme of re-armament cotton represents only 10 per cent. of a single year's output of the Lancashire mills.
Much is said about the placing of orders abroad in textiles and clothing. The facts are that in the time of the previous Government orders were placed for £36 million of which £25 million were in Europe, £8 million in Japan and smaller amounts in India and the United States. This, again, was based on the fact that at that time there was a shortage of capacity. They were placed in the spring and summer of last year. As soon as we were aware of what was going on, we reversed that policy. Some orders were signed later, but only where negotiations had reached the point where public faith was pledged and failure to sign would involve either a breach of contract or a gross breach of faith. Wherever possible, we cancelled orders. We succeeded in cancelling orders placed in the United States or reducing them from a total of £1,750,000 down to £750,000.
In December, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Supply gave instructions that no future orders were to be placed, except for the most special reasons and then only with his personal authority. Very few contracts have, in fact, been placed and these are of a specialist character, which could be defended individually. This policy will be continued in the future.

Mr. Hugh Gaitskell: Is the right hon. Gentleman referring to cotton only, or to textiles, or certain other things as well?

Mr. Thorneyeroft: When I spoke of the total amount of orders placed by the previous Government I was speaking of all textiles, including clothing. The orders already placed amount to half the total re-armament requirements in the case of wool and three-quarters of the total rearmament requirement in the case of cotton.

Mr. H. Rhodes: That is for defence contracts in the United Kingdom. It has nothing to do with contracts placed abroad.

Mr. Thorneycroft: What I am speaking of are Service contracts placed with the Ministry of Supply. I am speaking of all of them and saying that no more of them are being placed abroad, except in the most special circumstances and with the individual authority of the Minister and the matter being referred to him.
We are doing everything possible to bring forward the placing of contracts for military and Civil Defence purposes. The Home Secretary, the Minister of Defence and the Minister of Supply are seeing what more can be done in this direction, but I want to repeat that however this matter is phased there must be some limit to the impact it can make on a situation of the size which confronts us.
I have given some account of the actions which have been taken and some account of the problems which remain to be faced. I have no wish to underestimate these problems nor, I think, have I sought to do so in the speech I have been making, but I think it would be a pity if we in this House or those in the industries concerned became too despondent.
Our worst danger, perhaps, is that we might abandon or relax the great efforts that have been made to build up efficiency, to bring in new machines and new methods, and to invent new fabrics. Both sides of industry have co-operated in trying to improve the efficiency of the textile industries and I pay tribute to them. Much more still needs to be done, but these troubles should not be a signal to slacken in our efforts or abandon experiments, either on the technical side, in double-shift working, or in anything of that kind.
We have to deal with a buyers' market and keen competition. Manufacturers, in those circumstances, have to quote competitive prices if they are to regain old markets, let alone if they are to win new markets. Solutions to all the problems are not within our grasp and I agree with the hon. Member that they are not perhaps within the grasp of any Government. Let us at least tackle those that are. These events, while they present us with great problems and considerable anxiety, should also present us with a challenge and it must be the task both of Government and industry to accept it.

4.46 p.m.

Mr. W. A. Burke: I am glad of the opportunity to draw attention to the present serious situation in the Lancashire cotton towns. While I am aware that this debate is concerned with textiles generally, I can only speak, of course, of the cotton industry. I can speak most definitely for that part of Lancashire which we know as the weaving area—North-East Lancashire, the part that stretches from Blackburn right across to Nelson and Colne—the Burnley area, and by the Burnley area I mean the Burnley Exchange area which covers Nelson and Colne and a number of smaller places.
In that area are towns which are literally cotton towns. They have, as the President of the Board of Trade said, only one industry—places like Great Harwood, where 80 per cent. of the insured population work in the few cotton mills which are in that town. The rest of the insured population is made up of postmen, policemen, school teachers and people like that. When the cotton industry is hit in those towns, it means that the whole town practically dies.
That situation is prevalent in a very large part of North-East Lancashire, which is the Burnley area. I know from conversations which I have had previously with the President of the Board of Trade that there is no great need to press upon him, or upon the Government, the seriousness of the situation, but I should like to tell him of the alarm and despondency which is felt in that area by the sudden turn of events that seems to have overwhelmed the population.
The right hon. Gentleman spoke about 5 per cent. of unemployment. I am afraid he is seriously under-estimating the situation. There is a great deal more than 5 per cent. unemployment in Burnley, at all events. When we talk of unemployment, as the President of the Board of Trade said, we do not really begin to touch the problem because, apart from those who are temporarily stopped, there are thousands of people working full-time but getting half wages. The problem there is not one of temporary or of permanent unemployment; it is one of permanent full-time working with people underemployed, and, therefore, drawing only half wages. But the Minister will know—

Mr. Cyril Osborne: Are the people of whom the hon. Member is speaking paid on piece-work rates, or are they day or hourly workers? How can they be working full-time and earning only half wages? Are they pieceworkers?

Mr. Burke: That shows how little knowledge of Lancashire has penetrated into outside districts. Under-employment in Lancashire is known perfectly well. A weaver ordinarily works six looms; she is paid piece-work rates. When she has only three looms to look after, she turns only half the product, but she has to be there the whole time. These people may well—indeed, in previous times, many of them did—earn less for full-time work than they could have got at the employment exchange.

Mr. Ellis Smith: We all know that.

Mr. Burke: The President of the Board of Trade will be aware, from the deputations he has already met, of the seriousness that is felt in the area. He will know that immediately the decision was known about the Australian embargo, the Manchester Chamber of Commerce telegraphed him and, I believe, sent a deputation. He will know, too, that they sent him a telegram asking him not to put into operation the D scheme. I do not want to go into that, however, because I agree that it would be wrong to confuse the serious issue of Lancashire's present position with the Utility scheme, although it has some bearing on part of the problem.
The President of the Board of Trade will know that the Council of the Textile Factory Workers' Association is so concerned about the position that they are sending a deputation to meet Lancashire M.P.s. I ought to tell the right hon. Gentleman that in the North-East Lancashire area, about which I am speaking, all the local authorities have been so much concerned that they have met the regional officers of the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Supply. They have also met—I hope that the President will take note of this—the Cotton Board, but have got very little satisfaction from it. I hope that when he meets Sir Raymond Street, the right hon. Gentleman will ask him to take a little more helpful attitude towards the problem of diversification in industry than he has shown up to the present.
What has happened is that in a very short time the area has been overwhelmed with large-scale unemployment. I remember what Lancashire was like in the old days before the war, and in the House I fought for diversification of industry there. I was once successful in the Ballot and asked Sir Kingsley Wood, who was then President of the Board of Trade, to appoint a committee to go into the problem. As a result, the problem was investigated and we had the Barlow Report, but unfortunately war came, industry expanded in Lancashire, and we did not become a Development Area. In consequence, we are now slipping back to the position of many years ago. Every Lancashire cotton town in the weaving area is now concerned very much with the same problem.
While I was waiting to be called, I received a green card asking me to see one of the Lancashire textile leaders who is very well known to many in the House. I asked him what was the latest position in Burnley. He tells me—and this disproves the point that the President of the Board of Trade was making—that two or three mills are closed down until Easter and that 16 other mills are closed down this week. The number of unemployed in Burnley is about 2,560. That is a very serious position. It is a good deal more than 5 per cent.
What does this unemployment mean to a town like Burnley, where until October of last year the weavers were earning £7 or £8 a week but now come down to half wages—for some of them, £3 or £4 a week—and with others down to 26s. a week? It means that every shopkeeper will lose £s per week. It means that in Burnley alone the shopkeepers will be missing about £10,000 or £12,000 worth of trade a week.
It does not mean only that the cotton trade is hit. When unemployment is brought into the weaving sheds, it means also unemployment in the spinning factories, in the engineering shops, the mills, the machine shops, the warehouses, the bleach works, the die works and the finishing works. It runs right throughout the whole of the area, and to Lancashire a stoppage in the cotton trade is one of the really dreadful things.
I received only two days ago a letter from a lady—a stranger—who has been

in Burnley, and I should like to read a few remarks about her impressions of Burnley as she saw it last week as compared with what she knew some time ago. She says:
The impression I got was that after so long a spell of full employment, the present turn of events has hit them very hard. They seem bewildered and greatly distressed. I am certain that anything you can say down there"—
that is, in the House—
will help them considerably in their present unhappy state.
That period of security has gone, and what Lancashire is afraid of is that we shall slip back again to the old days as-we knew them before the war.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Would my hon. Friend allow me to say this? Due to the method of short-time working in the cotton industry, those who are on short-time can be worse off than those who are totally unemployed, because they are not eligible for unemployment benefit.

Mr. Burke: That is perfectly true. Furthermore, a lot of married women do not go to the employment exchange to register as unemployed. It is difficult to convey to people outside Lancashire, who see only the employment exchange figures, an adequate picture of the distress which is rampant there.

Mr. Arthur Holt: Will the hon. Member allow me to clear up this point? What he describes is not the situation in Bolton. The tendency this time in Bolton has been to work one day less a week—to work four days or, at the worst, even three days—and on the days when people are working they are largely on full-time. His accurate description of what happened before the war does not apply in Bolton now.

Mr. Burke: Bolton is not so much a weaving area. It is a spinning area. They do things a little better, perhaps, in Bolton to get the maximum from the Government. In Burnley we are honest about the thing, and we are suffering.

Mr. Ellis Smith: The machines are different.

Mr. Burke: Last week I asked the Minister of Labour the present number of vacancies for cotton operatives in Burnley as compared with October of last year. This shows the suddenness of the change. In October, the employers were looking for employees—there were 400


vacancies. On 15th February, there were only 27, and these, probably, now have been filled. Instead of employers looking for 400 people, as they did in October, 2,500 operatives are now looking for work.
The Minister of Labour, in reply to a supplementary question, assured me that it was not the intention of the Government to keep a pool of labour in the cotton industry for drafting elsewhere. But whether it is the intention or not, the unfortunate part about it is that there is a very large pool of labour there at the present time, and we want something done to absorb that pool. We would prefer that it was absorbed in the cotton trade.
I do not share the pessimism of many people about the cotton trade. I believe we can go a good way towards restoring its prosperity. After all is said and done, it has been through difficult times before and we did recover the situation. The difficulty now is that there has been a change. We did achieve more confidence in Lancashire, but now a situation has arisen, and the change has so alarmed the people that they are feeling very depressed.
The Government may be able to tell us about something they can do to reassure people in that area. In June, 1951, in the whole of Burnley area there were only 89 male workers registered as unemployed. Of those 89, 48 were disabled people, and half of them were over 56. In fact, we had a situation in Lancashire, at least in the weaving area round Burnley, of complete confidence in the future up to September and October of last year. It has been said that the change was taking place before September and October. I do not know. I only know this, that right up to the Election we had vacancies and no unemployment. Now we have no vacancies and lots of unemployment.

Air Commodore A. V. Harvey: If the hon. Gentleman wants any proof he has only to visit Macclesfield where we had 60 unemployed last year, and the figure in October had gone up to the 700 mark.

Mr. Burke: I do not know anything about the Macclesfield area. I am talking about the weaving area in Lancashire and the problem facing the Government at the present time.
It is said that we ought not to have sent orders abroad. But every loom was fully occupied. There were warps in every room and every spindle was working, and there was no point in keeping those orders here. Now the situation has completely changed, and I was glad to hear the President of the Board of Trade say that he proposed to issue no more licences with regard to Japanese grey cloth. It may be there are differences in the cotton trade with regard to the finishing of grey cloth, but I cannot see why, if grey cloth is brought to this country to be finished in order to keep the finishers at work, they cannot be equally kept at work if the cloth is manufactured in this country. That is one of the problems which will have to be tackled.
I am of opinion that the Government would do a great deal for the cotton trade in this country in every way if they would say that there will be no more Japanese cloth coming into this country, but that the cloth which goes out for export will be stamped that it has been spun, woven and finished in Britain because we lose a great many markets owing to stuff coming into this country and being finished here and going into our markets presumably as British cloth. That might help considerably.
So far as the Australian quota is concerned, we lost there 123,000 square yards. The Minister says that 10 per cent. is all that the contracts will give us. But if it gave us 10 per cent., the Lancashire cotton trade having lost 20 per cent. in Australia, it would put back half the Australian trade. When we lose 123,000 square yards it means we have lost the work of 10,000 looms and, at four looms to an operator, we have lost the work of 2,500 operatives. So at least, by looking at the problem of contracts, part of the damage which has been done by losing the Australian trade could be put right again straight away. I hope that that problem will be considered very seriously.
May I ask the Government to have a look at the problem of Utility from this point of view? It is having some bearing on the trade of this country. We do not want to go back again to shoddy goods. The week-end before last I went into a shop and asked the price of a certain garment. I was told it was 26s. They said, "If you buy today it is 26s., but if


you leave it till next week it will be 27s., because it will go outside the Utility range." I went into a tailor and asked the price of a suit. I was told that it was 30 guineas but that if I left it till next week, it being a good suit, it would come down to 27 guineas. So hon. Members will see that the people who can still afford the best will get the best. It would be a good thing if the Minister would consider, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the question of wiping out the Purchase Tax on all textiles at the present time.
I would ask the Minister, when he gives out the contracts, to give them straight to the mills and not to work through agents. It would be very much better for Lancashire if they went straight to the manufacturers instead of going to a man who has a little office in Manchester with a table and a chair in it. Last week I heard of a mill which was making sheeting and which is closed down until after Easter. I heard of an agent who placed an order for sheeting with a firm which had never done sheeting before, while the mill which could have done the job is out of a contract. I ask the Minister to consider that problem.
Returning to the question of diversification, in the old days people wandered away from Lancashire because there was no trade. Whole families went, and when the family went the women who could staff the mills went too. I know the Cotton Board and the cotton employers are afraid of diversification, because they say that if other industries are brought in, the people will be taken into those industries and there will be no one left for cotton.
I believe they are wrong. They have been proved to be wrong in the case of Chorley and Clayton. If we get other industries there we shall get the families, and what Lancashire needs is some industry for male labour so that the males will not go away and take the females with them as they did in the old days. I suggest that the Minister has a serious talk with Sir Raymond Street and tells him he ought not to be as afraid of diversification as apparently he is.
I ask the President to look at the question of contracts, of Japanese competition, of diversification and the Purchase Tax as well. If he will give serious consideration

to those matters, I think he can bring back to Lancashire the confidence that we built up to October of last year.

5.9 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel Wentworth Schofield: Before the conclusion of this debate many expressions of opinion will have been voiced about the causes of the depression which has overtaken the cotton trade of this country. There is no doubt that many of those opinions will be completely at variance one with the other. But however much we may differ on the question of causes, there is at least one thing upon which I feel hon. Members on both sides of the House can agree; and that is that we all share a common anxiety about the increased unemployment which has occurred as a result of the persistence of this depression.
In examining the problem, the first thing upon which we should be clear is that this depression is not peculiar to this country. It is world-wide in extent and a similar anxiety is being expressed in other countries as well. Therefore, we should look outside rather than inside this country for the causes of this depression.
As the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) pointed out, in Belgium and in other European countries, short-time working is now the order of the day. France has banned any further importation of Japanese cloth. Many firms in France are working fewer than 30 hours a week. In the United States of America a very limited off-take is reported.
It may be of interest to hon. Members that whereas last year American cotton spinners consumed more than 10,500,000 bales of cotton, it is expected that this year they will consume fewer than nine million bales. That shows at once that there is a total loss of production, over the whole of the United States, of more than 15 per cent.
Even in Japan troubles are so great that the Japanese Government have decided to force on the industry a reduction in production of something like 40 per cent. Although this question of recession, or slump, is being argued in many quarters at present, there are people not unfamiliar with the textile scene who are firmly of opinion that the recession in Lancashire need only be a temporary recession.
They hold the view that this recession is the direct result of choking up of the pipeline which has become over-stocked with goods largely as a result of the panic buying which took place because of the war in Korea. There is no doubt that until that pipeline begins to clear itself in some way a resumption of buying must, of necessity, be on a restricted scale.
Another important factor is the "bearish" sentiment which exists about the future trend of raw cotton prices. In the case of Egyptian cotton, the general belief is that the Alexandria market is on a completely false basis and that, in spite of the efforts which are being made by cotton interests in Egypt to bolster up an artificial price, Egyptian cotton will have to suffer a considerable reduction in price if it is to attain parity with world values for other cotton.
When we remember that about one-half of our total number of spindles are engaged upon the spinning of Egyptian or Egyptian type cotton, it is easy to understand the extent to which the uncertainty about cotton prices affects the trade of Lancashire.
In the other parts of the industry where American or American type cotton provides the raw material, there, again, there is a feeling that the prices for the raw material are too high, though not for the same reasons as those which obtain in respect of Egyptian cotton. Lancashire spinners have been complaining for a long time that the price charged for American cotton by the Raw Cotton Commission is higher than the world value.
This places Lancashire spinners and manufacturers—the whole of the trade—at a grave disadvantage with foreign competitors who can buy the same type and quality of cotton at a price lower than that which the Raw Cotton Commission charges Lancashire spinners.
The reason for that is the dollar shortage. Because of the stringency in the supply of dollars the Raw Cotton Commission has had to search the markets of the world for non-dollar cotton which may be used as a substitute for the more popular American cotton. The demand which has thus been engendered by buying those cottons has forced up the price of non-dollar cotton to such an extent that the average price for the whole of the

cotton bought by the Commission is higher than world prices.
A short time ago the price charged to British spinners by the Raw Cotton Commission for American cotton was as much as 6d. a lb. higher than the world price. But today, because of the lack of demand caused by the depression, the price of those outside growths has receded until the average price of cotton now quoted by the Commission is only 1d. a lb. higher than the world price.
But even that is too much. It is quite enough in the present position, when there is such a scarcity of business, to push what business there is into the hands of our foreign competitors. Indeed, any price higher than the world price is too much if Lancashire is to hold its own in the fight for world trade.
When buying is resumed exactly the same conditions will prevail once more unless dollars can be made available with which to buy the American cotton which Lancashire needs. I suggest that this is one way in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer can help, by ensuring that the endeavours of the cotton industry are not hampered in future by an insufficiency of dollars with which to finance her raw material needs.
In an effort to beat the depression, both spinners and manufacturers in Lancashire have already taken their medicine and have already reduced their prices to the absolute minimum. The operatives, for their part, have also taken a knock by the short time which they have worked and which, much to their credit, they have accepted without embarrassing in any way the efforts of the industry to deal with the situation.
For a long time Lancashire has been Egypt's best customer for Egyptian cotton. It is now up to the cotton interest in Egypt to decide how much of the knock they are prepared to take and how far they are prepared to reduce their prices to bring them in keeping with world parities and thus restore the confidence in raw cotton prices which is needed.
Also, we must not forget how the cotton trade is affected by the balance of payments crisis. That the crisis extends far beyond the shores of this island and that there is no easy and comfortable way of dealing with it has been brought to our minds in no uncertain manner


recently by the action which has been taken in other parts of the Commonwealth. The sudden decision of the Australian Government to bring their imports to a virtual standstill was a forceful reminder of the widespread nature of this crisis.
Though no one can dispute the right of Governments to deal with their own problems in their own way, there is no denying that this decision by the Australian Government was a grievous blow at Lancashire's textile trade. Though consignments which are actually in transit are to be admitted into Australia, they will have to be counted against future quotas.
But that does not alter the fact that there are still large orders which have been placed, which are not yet completed and for which the raw material has been secured. The manufactured goods made from these materials will finish up in the warehouses and the cellars on this side of the world unless something is done to find some outlet for them, and I can assure hon. Members on both sides of the House that that is much easier said than done. It is actions of this kind by Governments which make the cotton industry, dependent as it is for its welfare upon a healthy export trade, particularly vulnerable, and, if this sort of thing is to be allowed to develop, then efforts to stimulate and expand the export trade will be rendered meaningless.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury and Radcliffe (Mr. W. Fletcher), who is just coming into the Chamber, has put forward on many occasions a point which is troubling all sections of the cotton industry at the present time, and particularly the exporting section of the industry. It is the apparent disregard which is being shown by Governments for the sanctity of contracts. The recognition and carrying out of contracts is virtually the corner stone upon which all trade is built, and the moment Governments or individuals cease to recognise that salient truth it will be the end of all honourable trading between Governments and individuals alike.
In what way can the Government help in this crisis? Lancashire does not expect the Government to place defence orders merely for the purpose of stimulating trade. Nevertheless, I was glad to hear from the President of the Board of Trade the assurance that there will be no undue

hold-up in the placing of these defence orders, and I hope that instructions will be given to the responsible Government Departments that a fair share of these orders will be given to the textile industry by placing as many orders as possible with the Lancashire mills at the earliest possible moment.
Now, may I say a word or two which I hope will be heard in the Colonial Office? During the past few years, when the sellers' market prevailed and Lancashire's order books were full and long-dated, the Colonial Office was anxious to ensure that the populations of the Colonies were not kept short of essential supplies of cotton goods, so they arranged for extensive importations of cotton goods from Japan. In the Lancashire cotton trade today, there is a considerable fear that the Colonial Office in London and the various authorities in the Colonies are not fully aware of the change which has taken place in Lancashire during the past few months, and that they do not realise that all the facilities are available in Lancashire to supply any amount of cotton goods to the Colonies which they may require.
Reports have been received in Manchester giving the impression that further orders are liable to be placed with Japan, unless some action is taken to prevent it. It would certainly give great satisfaction indeed if the Government would tell Lancashire quite plainly that steps are being taken to limit the import of Japanese cotton goods into the Colonies and to direct as much of that trade as possible to Lancashire.
Finally, I should like to stress this point. It must not be assumed by anyone that Lancashire has lost heart. Today, the cotton industry of Lancashire is far stronger, from the point of view of technical efficiency and organisation, than ever before in its history and, being aware of this, it is facing the situation, which is a difficult one, with realism and determination. All that it asks from the Government is that the Government, in their turn, shall also play their part in the way which Governments can do, and that the Government will deal with this problem in the same spirit and temper, and with no less realism and determination, than that which is being shown by the industry itself.

5.26 p.m.

Mrs. Barbara Castle: I have been very interested, in listening to the speech of the President of the Board of Trade and of the hon. and gallant Member for Rochdale (Lieut.-Colonel Schofield), to find that they have discovered the world crisis. There has been some difference of opinion among hon. Gentlemen opposite in the last few months as to the exact cause and nature of our economic difficulties, but of one thing I am quite sure. It is that the longer this Government continue in office, the more will the world crisis have a role in their speeches.
I think we all remember enjoying from the President of the Board of Trade, in his previous incarnation on this side of the House, speeches which delighted us, in which he made great game of the economic difficulties of the Labour Government. The right hon. Gentleman had not then discovered the world and the influence which it exerts on our affairs, and we are glad to see that office has educated him so rapidly.
The speech of the right hon. Gentleman was very moderate in tone and very conciliatory, but I am afraid that it was extremely disappointing in content, and it certainly did not measure up to the spirited challenge which was given in the able speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood). When the right hon. Gentleman, at the beginning of his speech, embarked on a long historical treatise, my heart sank, because I know that, whenever a Minister starts a speech with a historical treatise, we can be sure that it will not end up with a blue print for action, and that is what has happened this afternoon.
We have been left with a very vague and indecisive impression by the right hon. Gentleman, and it really will not do, because this situation is one which is striking at the roots of the economic and psychological security of a very important area of this country. It has been said that we must not get the position out of focus, that we must not overemphasise the difficulties or alternatively under-estimate them, and I certainly agree that we must keep a balanced view of what is happening and of what we must do to meet the situation, but it would be a fair statement to say that, first and foremost, unemployment in

Lancashire is still rising and that nobody in any responsible position in Lancashire today is prepared to say that he can see a trend for the better.
The second point is that the rate of unemployment in Lancashire is running at something like three or four times the national rate. In that situation, anyone who represents a Lancashire constituency in this House is entitled to something more encouraging, more positive and more decisive than we have had from the right hon. Gentleman this afternoon.
I hoped that, when he began his comprehensive survey, we should be given some impression of how the Government size up the situation and where they think Lancashire is going, because Lancashire is asking that question. It is undoubtedly true that what is threatening Lancashire is nothing less than a slump. Lancashire is asking two things. First, is this a temporary situation, or is it the beginning of a new and enduring depression? Secondly, is this accidental or is it, to some extent, deliberately created by Government policy? [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] Just a moment. I think hon. Members opposite ought to be a little more thoughtful before they start saying "Oh!" It demonstrates the frivolity of their approach to this problem.
When we consider that we are embarked upon a re-armament drive, it is obvious that the Government are trying to run down some industries. It would be quite wrong to inject a big re-armament programme into our economy and not to run down some industries. Is it, therefore, a partisan point to ask the Government whether, in the economic pattern it is evolving, Lancashire is expected to contribute some manpower? I think we have the right to ask the Government whether it is part of their policy to help man up the re-armament drive by running down the cotton industry.

Mr. W. J. Taylor: I understood the hon. Lady to say that the Government had deliberately brought about this state of unemployment for a political purpose of their own. She is now saying that if the Government had of necessity to move some labour, that was another matter. Will she say exactly what she means?

Mrs. Castle: If the minds of hon. Members opposite were not so clouded


with partisanship they would understand what I meant. I never mentioned political purposes. I merely asked whether this recession in cotton was deliberate or accidental, and, if it was deliberate, whether it was part of the economic plan for the re-armament drive.

Mr. W. Fletcher: The hon. Lady's question presupposes that she believes it is in the power of any Government in this country to bring about a big recession in cotton. The whole tenor of the two Front Bench speeches this afternoon was that it was not within the power of this country to do that. Therefore, it seems that her argument is on an entirely false basis.

Mrs. Castle: I think that is a very peculiar argument. If it is not in the power of any Government to reduce consumption in certain industries, then no Government can ever organise a rearmament programme or a defence against inflation. Surely, the whole financial and budgetary policy of the Government is to do just that, to divert demand from certain industries in order to free manpower for the manning up of the re-armament programme. I must say I think that is a remarkable intervention by the hon. Gentleman who I always thought had a high level of intelligence.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Is my hon. Friend aware that Mr. Lewis Wright, the President of the Lancashire Weavers, and a most responsible man, made similar statements in Manchester last Saturday afternoon?

Mrs. Castle: I am glad to be reinforced from such an excellent source, and I go forward encouraged to resist the interventions of hon. Members opposite.
I return to my point, because Lancashire is asking these questions. This problem has been steadily accumulating since November, and it shows signs of getting worse, not better. How long do the Government intend to wait before getting down to fundamental answers to fundamental questions? We have had nothing fundamental from the President of the Board of Trade today.

Mr. W. J. Taylor: rose—

Mrs. Castle: I am delighted to see that I am getting under the hon. Gentleman's skin.
I ask the Government for a reply today. Lancashire will certainly not consider that this debate has gone anywhere near the root of the matter unless replies to these questions are given. Is it the intention of the Government deliberately to divert cotton workers to armaments in the Lancashire area? That is the first point. The second point is that if it is their intention, where is the work to which these workers are to be deliberately diverted? Where are the contracts, the factories and the raw materials for them?
If there is no such intention, then may we have some estimate from the Government of what they visualise as the role of the cotton industry in the light of our current economic position? Is that too much to ask? Is it too much to ask the Government to let us have a clear picture of whether they believe that this industry, which has been so buffeted and bruised by world events and is now beginning to be knocked about again, is undergoing a new phase or not?
We have heard a good deal this afternoon from all sides about what is happening to our export markets; how this one has gone and how that one will not be regained, and so on. I suggest that this is a job the Government ought to do. Instead of being left to make our own estimates of trade trends in an amateur way, we ought to have a White Paper on the whole matter telling us what is happening in the international trade field and what the Government think ought to be the size of the cotton industry today, and what manpower should be employed in it.

Mr. Holt: May I ask the hon. Lady how she thinks anyone, either on the Government Front Bench or on the Opposition Front Bench, can possibly forecast what the future of the cotton trade is going to be? That is a question which can only be answered by the people in Lancashire and other areas who are in daily contact with the markets of the world.

Mrs. Castle: I have a very simple answer to that one. Clearly, the picture must be drawn with the aid of the men on the spot, but the job of co-ordinating the information and of putting the matter into its proper perspective is the job of the Government. Therefore, I ask the Government to say, if there is to be no


deliberate diversion of these workers to re-armament, what they think is the level of consumption that will have to be met and what manpower will be required to meet it.
Finally, all the talk this afternoon has been of a reduction in markets, and so on. If the cotton industry has got to settle down to a lower level of production, then where is the plan for the alternative industries which will keep Lancashire employed? If there is one thing about which Members representing Lancashire constituencies are convinced it is that Lancashire will not tolerate another period of stagnation and decay. It is determined that this time there shall be no drift, but effective action. After all, the Government have now had nearly six months in office.

Mr. W. J. Taylor: The Government of the party opposite had six years.

Mrs. Castle: The hon. Gentleman was very effectively answered by the hon. and gallant Member for Rochdale, who said that the cotton industry today faces this new crisis better equipped technically, and with greater organisational efficiency, than it has ever had in its history. That is due to the fact that in the last six years we had a Government which had a policy for the cotton industry and which did something about cotton.
Had the Labour Government been in office now we should not have had the rather vague speech which we had from the President of the Board of Trade today, but a plan of action in order that we might keep our promise that never again should Lancashire be cursed and darkened by the shadow which fell upon it in the inter-war years. We have a right to expect something more positive at this stage.
It is not as if, when the right hon. Gentleman took office, this was a virgin field. The cotton industry has been more examined and reported upon and analysed and statisticised than any other industry in this country. Some of that work was done, and very rightly and very effectively done, by my former right hon. and learned Friend Sir Stafford Cripps when he was President of the Board of Trade. I know something about it because I had the privilege of being his Parliamentary Private Secretary at that time.
I know that his first interest and anxiety on taking office was to make sure that in the post-war period Lancashire should enter upon a new period of stability and prosperity; and up to now it has had such a period. But it is quite wrong for the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade to suggest that it was because the industry "flung itself" into an exploitation of post-war possibilities. It had to be pushed; and it was pushed very effectively by the Labour Government. It was done by a series of co-ordinated plans by Sir Stafford Cripps.
As early as October, 1945, he set up the Cotton Working Party to gather together evidence already available—piled up during the war by such bodies as the Cotton Board post-war committee and other important committees which had been examining these problems. As soon as he had their report he did not brood upon it like a hen for six months. It was only a short while before he had made up his mind and was offering the industry a spinning subsidy scheme.
We estimated the post-war prospects in Lancashire and worked very successfully to a plan. It was based on two primary assumptions. The first was that we could take it for granted that we should find after the war a continuation of the pre-war trends in international trade. That is to say there would be a world expansion of the consumption of cotton goods but a reduction in the world trade in cotton goods because, of course, other countries would be developing their own industries and new rivals would be appearing.
Therefore, at that time we never expected that the export position for cotton when the war ended would be likely to be an easy one. Nobody in Lancashire has ever assumed that. But the second assumption upon which we worked was that we could expect that Lancashire could stabilise itself in meeting a home consumption of something like 5 per cent. over the pre-war level—that increase being due to the fact that we were to have full employment and a fairer re-distribution of income and, therefore, a more stable and sustained home demand.
How has that post-war plan worked, and what has suddenly gone wrong? Unless the Government really go about


the task in same way as Sir Stafford Cripps did we may be asking for the wrong answers because we have not analysed the problem properly. I have been trying to do a little of my own amateur research into the problem because the Government have not been doing it for me.
It is very interesting to see in the Cotton Working Party's report a table giving the Cotton Board's estimates of postwar trade, based upon certain assumptions which I have mentioned and which were certainly not over optimistic assumptions. Nobody who helped to compile those cotton reports—and they were all men from the industry—was feeling optimistic. Therefore, they were assuming adverse developments in our export trade and no excessive expansion in our home trade.
But if one studies those figures it is very interesting to find that their estimate of our export figure was at just about the level at which it was in fact running in 1951. The Cotton Board estimate was that, even on the least optimistic assumptions, exports of piece goods would be running after the war at about 750 million square yards a year. As far as I can make out, the actual yardage at the moment is 1,083 million; and as that includes about 260 million yards of Japanese grey cloth, it works out at just about the figure they estimated.

Air Commodore Harvey: The hon. Lady is quoting figures for 1951. I want to be quite fair, but surely she agrees—and it has been admitted on all sides of the House—that in the 12 months after the commencement of the war in Korea practically every country, fearing a fresh world conflagration, stocked up and that is why the pipeline is full now. So 1951 is not really a fair example of what production would normally have been.

Mrs. Castle: Obviously I am quoting 1951 because these are the latest figures available. I agree it was a year when some of those influences were being felt. I am only giving the picture for what it is worth up to the end of last year and saying that the estimate on the export side just about works out right. But the interesting thing is that the estimated consumption on the home market, which the Cotton Board table

gives as 2,300 million square yards, has not been reached. I believe the consumption on the home market has been running at something like 1,500 million square yards.
Therefore, up to the end of last year, the deficit has not been on the export side. It has not been in that respect that we have been falling down. On the other hand, we have not yet reached the home consumption figure to meet which the post-war development of Lancashire industry was planned. That is very relevant to our consideration, because whereas it is quite true there is now a new threat to our export trade, and that probably the figure at the end of 1952 will not be as high and the estimate will not be reached in the current year, we are still left with the fact that we have to set off against that a situation in which the home consumption, on which Lancashire might have planned to depend, is not being reached. And in such a situation it would be crazy to do anything which would reduce our home consumption of goods.
Therefore, I suggest that in attempting to meet this situation the Government must have a two-fold plan. They must have a plan on the export side and a plan on the home market side. I think we should agree on one thing—that our immediate difficulties with exports would appear to spring not so much from that natural expansion of industries in other countries as from the new wave of artificial restriction of trade which has followed the Korean war and the world-wide effects of the re-armament programme. It is quite true that the natural expansion of home industries in other countries is there; but to some extent it had been allowed for in the post-war plan, and it had not, up to the end of the last war, prevented us from reaching the post-war export estimate.
What does hit us now is this new wave of import restrictions which we played our part in setting going, and which is now circling round the world in a downward spiral and threatening to plunge us all into a world-wide recession of trade. We are suffering now from the interaction of each country's balance of payments difficulties upon the others.
Clearly, in that situation, there is a field in which Government action could be effective without restricting the normal


rights of expansion of other countries. If we are all going to settle our problems internationally by dropping world trade to a lower level than it need be, we are not dealing with natural causes but with very man-made causes of the economic difficulties from which we suffer.
Taking the case of Australia, which has been quoted so often, I think that we have a very legitimate cause for saying that the actions of the Australian Government have been planned, not of course with malice, but with short-sightedness amounting almost to stupidity. Even assuming for a moment that Australia could not solve her problem merely by cutting out non-sterling goods—because she says that so large a part of her imports have been sterling imports she could not have balanced her trade without some cuts in sterling goods—there is ground for saying that the selection of the items she has cut is the height of folly when one considers the question in terms of the Commonwealth family as a whole and the needs of that family.
I was interested to read, in the "Observer" of 9th March, the following:
Details of Australia's emergency import licencing, … were disclosed by the Minister for Customs, Mr. O'Sullivan. They show that British exporters of machinery and capital equipment, already hard put to it to meet delivery dates, are likely to be least affected, whilst exporters in industries already having difficulty in selling goods abroad will face the most critical time since the 'thirties.
The outstanding example of the second category is, of course, the textile industry. In other words, we have Australia meeting her sterling problem by cutting our textile imports and trying to enter into the queue for capital goods that we can sell in any part of the world. I think that the fact that that problem was not discussed at the Commonwealth Conference shows that nothing worth-while could have been discussed. What else was there to discuss, if we did not discuss the simple problem that Britain faces—the fact that we can sell our capital goods but we cannot sell our textiles? "O.K." says Australia, "we will cut out your textiles and buy your capital goods."
If our Commonwealth family is not to have a common Commonwealth plan, I think we should do what has had to be done more than once in the last six years

—enter into bilateral arrangements of conditional sale and say "All right, if you want any capital equipment you have to take so many textiles as well." That is what we had to do in our various bilateral European trade treaties and it is up to the Commonwealth members themselves to decide whether they are going to settle these things in an amicable way or whether they are to be settled in the harsh way—

Mr. Gerald Nabarro: I have here a statement issued from Australia House in regard to the restrictions placed on imports from the United Kingdom. It clearly draws a line of demarcation between consumer goods and capital equipment, as the hon. Lady says; but to get the matter in its correct perspective, it does definitely say that capital goods will be subject to quota treatment by administrative control. It is a different form of restriction, but it is a restriction on capital goods.

Mrs. Castle: I agree. I was not denying that. They are both subject to import licensing. But the details, according to the "Observer", show that those least affected by the import restrictions will be the capital goods exporters. The effect of the restrictions imposed depends entirely on the size of the quota, and it seems to me to be quite clear from that report that the quotas for capital goods will be very much more generous than those for textiles, although our capital goods are the goods we have the least difficulty in selling anywhere.
The second artificial restriction in the world today to which I should like to draw the attention of the House is one that is really quite crazy when one considers the extent to which we face a dollar problem in the sterling area—and that is the tariff position in the United States. I think it is high time that the British Government took a rather stronger line on this question. I read with great interest a report of a Commerce Mission sent to Europe by E.C.A. in 1949 to study this problem of the dollar gap, and what Britain and America could do about it. I recommend the Minister to read the report, because it shows quite clearly, having gone through all the factors in the situation, that
Expanded sales in the United States of products from the participating countries,"—


that is E.R.P. countries—
their dependencies, and other areas stand out, in spite of their many difficulties, as the main solution of the dollar gap problem.
It goes on:
In summary, a weighing of alternative courses of action leads to the conclusion that the present critical lack of balance in world trade should be corrected"—
and, in their italics—
"primarily by stimulating an expansion of exports of goods and services from other countries to the United States."
That was a report in 1949.
In another section it points out that the exports to the United States of the countries most needing dollars have been diminishing and not expanding. Those exports, in 1937, for instance, were 2 per cent. of the gross national production of the United States, whereas by 1948 they had fallen to 1.2 per cent. and one of the reasons, the Mission frankly admits, is the system of tariff barriers deliberately put up by the United States of America against the entry of our goods; and anybody in textiles knows how high some of those barriers are.

Mr. A. C. M. Spearman: Does the hon. Lady realise that since that date the national income in the United States has increased by 25 per cent.; her imports by 50 per cent. and, since 1948, she has reduced her tariffs by 28.3 per cent.?

Mrs. Castle: I do not think anybody would say that the tariff problem does not remain. We know it does. I think it is of relevance. I am quoting from a report prepared by American businessmen.

Mr. Spearman: Since that date.

Mrs. Castle: I dare say; but we have not had the dramatic response to the situation which is clearly outlined not by the American State Department or politicians but by the businessmen, based on the economics of the dollar gap.

Mr. S. Silverman: Is it not also true that it is precisely since that date that there has been a falling off in textile exports from this country to the United States of America?

Mrs. Castle: That is so. I think the House agrees that it is a ridiculous anomaly that, while we are struggling to

dispose of our goods and to earn dollars, we should be faced with these barriers.
The third artificial barrier which remains to bedevil our position and to make our problem more severe is that increasingly artificial barrier between the East and the West in the development of our trade.

Mr. Harold Davies: It is crazy.

Mrs. Castle: It is ridiculous that we have a situation in which Britain has a strategic stockpile of timber, of which a substantial element comes from the Soviet Union, and yet for strategic reasons we cannot go to the Soviet Union and say, "You want machine tools. Very well, you can have some machine tools provided that you take some British textiles." I should have thought in any case that it was extraordinarily difficult to decide the exact differentiation between a civilian and military use of a machine tool.
These strategic restrictions are further drying up the channels of world trade. So long as that process continues, only one thing faces us, and that is an increasing recession and a downward spiral of the standard of life of every country participating in it.
Finally I turn to the second side on which the Government ought to have a clear and decisive policy, the home market. It is crazy that at a moment when the textile trades are heading for a slump, at a moment when, as the figures I have quoted show, we have not reached the level of home consumption which we estimated for the post-war period, we should extend Purchase Tax to new sections of what was once Utility clothing. It may be perfectly true, as the right hon. Gentleman says, that when he went to Lancashire he was told by the Cotton Board and other bodies to get rid of the Utility scheme. But is he prepared to say that they are happy at the alternative which the Government have now put forward? Are they not now beginning to realise what will be the effect of deliberately sending up the price of clothing on the home market by the D scheme being at its present level?
When I blamed the right hon. Gentleman earlier, he was out of the Chamber at the time, so that is probably why he is still smiling. I may say that I thoroughly disposed of him in his absence:


I said then that his lack of decisive action was unfair to Lancashire, and I will give him one example of a field in which he has had a good deal of time to make up his mind. It may be a small item, but all these items contribute.
I raised this matter with him during his speech on the Budget debate but he waved it aside as relatively unimportant. It was the question of the uplift in the valuation for the Purchase Tax of the manufacturer's selling price where he sells direct to the retailer. It may be that the right hon. Gentleman does not know much about the subject, but he has had representations from the retailers about it. The net effect of that little anomaly is that a higher level of Purchase Tax is levied on those items than would otherwise be necessary. It is a highly tecnical point with which I will not weary the House, but the President of the Board of Trade ought to know about it, and he ought to have dealt with it by now.
Finally, is it not clear that the whole of the financial and budgetary policy of the Government, which has been unfolded to us in a succession of revelations since last November, is deliberately designed to give us in general, and Lancashire in particular, the worst of all possible worlds? Here we have a consumer industry heading for a slump. As I have shown, that slump springs largely from the lack of effective demand in the home market. Yet at that moment what does the Government do? It gives us the classic formula for turning a threatened slump into a permanent depression. It gives the formula of raising prices on the one hand while, through the operations of the Bank rate and other financial mechanisms, cutting demand on the other.
What sort of a hope is held out to Lancashire when the Government raise the cost of food and other necessities by cutting subsidies, when the Government raise the cost of clothing by putting Purchase Tax on goods that did not bear it before, when the Government raise the cost of transport by increasing the petrol tax, when the spiral is going upwards and upwards on the price side, and demand is being cut by an increase in the Bank rate and restrictions on credit?

Commander R. Scott-Miller: I am sure the hon. Lady would not deliberately mislead the House from

her suggestion that it is the actions of the Government which have to some degree caused unemployment in the clothing industry. Hon. Members opposite took part with me in a deputation from the clothing industry only about a month after the Election to make complaints about unemployment in that industry. I am sure the hon. Lady would not like to give the impression that those conditions arose only since the Budget was framed.

Mrs. Castle: If the hon. and gallant Gentleman had followed my speech—

An Hon. Member: He has only just come in.

Commander Scott-Miller: No, I have been here for some time.

Mrs. Castle: He cannot have been in here when I was giving the background, because I gave a clear assessment of how the situation arose. It is equally true to say that the actions of the Government since they came into office have substantially aggravated the situation, and we are only at the edge of that aggravation. I want to say this to my Lancashire friends who put up a most sincere appeal for the diversification of industry to solve this problem: diversification of industry in the circumstances of the economic and financial policy of this Government is a complete mirage.
What industries can be brought in? What alternative consumer industries can be developed or, indeed, what other kind of industries? Already in Blackburn I know of an engineering firm whose livelihood has been cut to ribbons by a steel allocation which has brought it face to face with bankruptcy simply because it is serving a useful home purpose by making dairy machinery. Yet because it is not engaged 100 per cent. on export trade or 100 per cent. for defence, its steel allocation is giving it a headache which is already sending it reeling.
How can industry be diversified in that way? The policy which this Government have embarked upon is a deliberate policy of reducing the standard of life, and that is a policy of reducing consumption. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Certainly, because that is how the re-armament programme and the export drive are to be paid for—if they are ever to be paid for at all. In that situation how can industry be diversified? What industries


can be introduced which will not be affected in the same way?
The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to balance his Budget by cutting the capital investment programme. In that case how can industries be expanded? There has been a wonderful expansion of industry in Blackburn, during the last six years, as the right hon. Member for Blackburn, West (Mr. Assheton) knows. In that time there has been more industrial building, more diversification, than Blackburn has seen for over a generation, but that is to come to an end. Industrial building will be cut, capital investment will be cut. That is how the Chancellor is facing our economic difficulties, and I say that if that policy continues then Lancashire faces slow death.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Colonel Sir Charles MacAndrew): I should warn the House that a great many hon. Members wish to speak. I hope all speeches will not be as long as those we have been experiencing.

6.10 p.m.

Captain Christopher Soames: I have no specialised knowledge of the textile industry, and I would not follow the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle) in the intricacies of the argument she put forward, except to say that the whole tone of her speech was as unhelpful and as unrealistic as the tone of the speech of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood), who opened this debate, was both helpful and realistic.
I trespass shortly on the time of the House to put forward a suggestion which may help to provide some alleviation of the difficulties which the textile industry is going through at present. I do not pretend that what I have to say is in any way a long-term or far-reaching remedy. I leave such proposals to other hon. Members who have far greater knowledge of the textile industry than I.
The sellers' market has come to an end in the textile industry quicker than in any other industry; indeed, its end has come with great suddenness. In the six months ending February, 1951, the then Government found it necessary to place orders abroad to the extent of £6 million

worth of textiles because the home industry was not able to fulfil the orders—for military clothing, and the like. This certainly showed a lack of foresight on the part of that Government, who could have held those orders and fed them to the industry as and when the industry was capable of dealing with them.

Mr. S. Silverman: Does the hon. and gallant Gentleman realise that, in making that remark, he is in great peril of joining the group to which my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle), who has just spoken, belongs? Those orders were placed in pursuance of a re-armament programme held to be urgent, and the Government of the day could have adopted the suggestion of postponing the re-armament programme, which my hon. Friend wanted them to do.

Captain Soames: That really is not so. If they had held on to the orders for clothing, it could not have been said that the whole of the re-armament programme was being held up. It was an error. It was an understandable and, perhaps, a not very serious error; but it was an error; and this Government is the heir to that error. I am glad to hear from the President of the Board of Trade an assurance that that mistake will not be repeated in the lifetime of this Government.

Mr. Silverman: Was it a mistake?

Captain Soames: In February, 1951, the industry's order books were full. Six months later, in August, there were 13,000 unemployed. Today, there are 70,000. They represent some 5 per cent. of the total labour force, not including short-time workers.
The problem that we have to face of unemployment in the textile industry is different from that which we have to face in other industries. The greatest danger we have to guard against, where unemployment is concerned throughout industry as a whole, is a shortage of raw materials. In the textile industry that is not the case. Unemployment is being brought about by the jamming of the congested pipeline of stocks through lack of demand by buyers. It is towards a solution of this immediate, pressing problem of dwindling markets that I wish to make a suggestion.

Mr. Harold Davies: May I point out that it is entirely wrong to say that in the textile industry it is not the case that a shortage of raw materials can create unemployment, because in the rayon industry, unless we get sulphur, the industry, being synthetic, is destroyed?

Mr. Osborne: Is the hon. Gentleman opposite aware that Courtaulds closed a factory recently, and that British Celanese have, as well, because they have too much raw material at present? The trouble has nothing to do with a shortage of materials.

Captain Soames: I did not say that it was impossible for the textile industry to suffer from a lack of raw materials. Of course, it is. What I am saying is that the problem with which we have to cope is not a shortage of raw materials at present, but the difficulty of finding markets.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Rossendale asked the President of the Board of Trade in what markets the textile industry could expand. I go further and ask how the Government can help in finding markets which can take up some of the slack now existing in the industry? It is, obviously, a very limited field. The responsibility must rest with the industry. However, I believe that the Government can help, and, so far as it is possible, I am sure that the Government will help by placing defence orders—for uniforms, and the like.
It is here that I have a suggestion to make. There are 850,000 refugees in Palestine at present. A constituent of mine has recently returned to this country from Palestine where he was acting as a sort of welfare officer in the various refugee camps. The standard of life of those refugees it pitifully low. They have virtually no resources of their own, and they are entirely dependent for the bare necessities of life on charity provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. They need clothing. Could we not provide it for them?
The United Nations General Assembly has recently approved a three-year programme of relief for those refugees costing £80 million, of which some £25 million is to be spent in the first year. Of the £25 million the United States Government

have offered to contribute the dollar equivalent of £17 million, and our Government will contribute some £4 million. Could not some of this money be spent on providing clothing for those unfortunate people who are in such dire need of it? Could not the orders for this clothing be placed in Lancashire?
I would suggest to my right hon. Friend that he makes representations to the Foreign Secretary that, say, £2 million worth of clothing be ordered and paid for out of the United Nations fund. Divided among 850,000 people, £2 million is not a very large sum. It is something just over £2 per head per year on clothing. It could be paid for either out of this country's contribution to the United Nations fund, or, better still, it could be regarded as a purchase by the United States, and paid for out of their contribution to the fund, and we should then receive payment in dollars for the clothing.

Mr. Jack Jones: Is not that money for food?

Captain Soames: I am not talking about our balance of payments. I am talking about the fund set up by the United Nations General Assembly, a portion of which is to provide clothing for those people, many of whom are almost stark naked.

Mr. Jones: My interjection was to ask whether it is not the case that that money was meant primarily to be spent on food, on which people are first of all dependent. The more money that is spent on clothing, the less money there will be to spend on food, and then somebody, somewhere, has to find extra money for food.

Captain Soames: It was never intended that the £25 million was to go for food alone. Some of it is to go to clothing. I submit that £2 million could be spent on clothing those refugees in Palestine. I do not pretend that this suggestion is anything but a temporary arrangement, and it in no way attacks the root of the problem, but it could provide some degree of relief to the industry, and it has a considerable advantage inasmuch as, once this is agreed upon, orders could be placed immediately. I hope that this suggestion may be found to be of some use.

6.19 p.m.

Mr. H. Rhodes: I listened with interest to what the President of the Board of Trade had to say in reply to the very good speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood). Before I begin what I originally wanted to say, I have one or two points to put which are relative to what the right hon. Gentleman said. With regard to price control, there was no reason whatever why any trader, retailer or wholesaler, could not have reduced prices even when price control was on. A maximum price was set, and to my mind the right hon. Gentleman's statement this afternoon was very misleading.
The D scheme, as it stands, is nothing but a tax-raising device. It has no other use. The old specification on which people could depend has gone. In my speech in the Budget debate, I agreed that some measure of flexibility had taken place, but nothing like as much as either the Douglas Report or the President of the Board of Trade made out at the time. There was a considerable amount of specified clothes being made. I will point out later why it is a misfortune that a lot of those specified clothes have disappeared; in a few months' time it may be necessary to be able to identify clothes, but, unfortunately, the President of the Board of Trade has lost that power through the Financial Resolution.
With reference to competition from Japan, I am very pleased to know that the right hon. Gentleman has given instructions that no more licences will be issued. That may appear to be a good thing. I dare say it is. But the most important question at the moment in that connection is: What will happen to the cloth already in stock? Will the right hon. Gentleman allow the stock that has been bought for export to come on to the home market? If any cloth that has been bought comes on to the home market, there can be no argument to justify any importation of Japanese cloths.
I ask the right hon. Gentleman to give us an answer to the question: Is any of the Japanese imported cloth being put on to the home market in competition with our own textile goods? If there is any element of that, no argument can be advanced to justify the importation of

any more. The whole purpose of the importation of Japanese cloth was to keep open textile markets in other parts of the world, and if that is not being done, for goodness' sake scrap the idea altogether and stop any more cloth coming in.
The right hon. Gentleman exhorted the industry to use more machines. Does he realise that the circumstances of the textile industry make it almost impossible to put in any machines? Does he realise that a machine which is the fruit of the work of the Shirley Institute for the last two years, a machine the use of which is very desirable throughout the length and breadth of the cotton industry, and, to a certain extent, of the wool industry, cannot be bought by Lancashire textile mills at the present time? Or if it can be, the orders are not coming forward. I understand that only two or three of those machines invented by the Shirley Institute have been ordered for our industry, yet America is prepared to take them as fast as she can get them.
It is all very well our talking in this House and giving data or information that we can pick up in journals, and allowing that sort of thing to go on. It means that in the sizing department America can beat us hand over fist by using our own machines, which we cannot afford to buy. It may be that it is the outcome of initial allowances disappearing in the last Budget. That is nothing to do with the right hon. Gentleman; my right hon. Friends were responsible for that. On the other hand, the restriction the Government have put upon credit, and also the reduction in capital investment, will play their part in putting Lancashire and Yorkshire industries gradually behind scratch as time goes on.
The hon. and gallant Member for Rochdale (Lieut.-Colonel Schofield), who made a very good contribution, made a very fair statement, but it would have been fairer if, when pointing out the disparity of 6d. a lb. between the price at which the Raw Cotton Commission was selling and the price at which it could be bought overseas, he had also mentioned the margins of the yarn spinners in Lancashire, and pointed out that the reduction they made three weeks ago of 10d. a lb. for 32s had more significance than any disparity in the Raw Cotton Commission prices for the past


six months. The hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) knows about this, because a lot of 32s goes into the hosiery trade.
What does the right hon. Gentleman consider is the difficulty in Lancashire? Does he consider it as just a recession, or does he consider that it is a slump? It may be too early for the Government to have made up their minds. It may be too early for the Cotton Board and the trade as a whole to have made up their minds. On the other hand, it is not too early to expect that the Government should at any rate be able to assure us that they are planning in case this should prove to be a slump, and I beg the right hon. Gentleman to give us some indication, before the debate is over, of the plans on which the Government propose to work.
What were the factors leading up to the present situation? Until July of last year, the Cotton Yarn Spinners' Association were still instructing and advising their members to keep their commitments to within a six-months' period, which meant that many spinners were booked to the end of the year.
During the six years since the war, there have been many difficulties in the supply of raw cotton. The hon. and gallant Member for Rochdale covered that point, and I will not labour it, but the main one was the shortage of dollars. The next one, which he did not mention, was the physical shortage of cotton in the 1950–51 season, which forced the Raw Cotton Commission to go into other markets—Brazil, Uganda, Sudan, Egypt and the rest—to buy cotton at far higher prices.
If my recollection serves me right, the disparity between the prices at which the Raw Cotton Commission were forced to buy and the American prices ruling at the time was far higher than that suggested by the hon. and gallant Member for Rochdale. It meant that prices were gradually rising, and there is no incentive to purchase like rising prices, because when one has the goods in one's hand it is a grand thing if they are appreciating in value while one holds them.
Other difficulties about raw cotton did a tremendous lot in West Africa, East Africa, Sudan, Uganda and other parts of the world to set those countries on their feet, and the fact that during that

period there was this demand for cotton from Lancashire did more good to these peoples than any Colombo Plan, however idealistic may have been its conception. The difficulties Lancashire suffered on account of cotton acquisition and the difficulties the consumer had to face on account of higher prices must surely be softened by the knowledge that those countries have woven something into their economies which, we hope, will benefit them for a long time to come.
I believe that the over-optimistic estimate on 8th August—and it was over-optimistic because the Cotton Bureau in America suggested that the cotton crop would be something in the region of 17½ million—really set the seal on the decline in prices. Just about that time, too, we could see the rise in the productivity in countries in Western Europe, India and Japan coming to their post-war peak, so we had two factors: one, a plentiful supply of cheap raw material in prospect, and the other, many producers glad to make the goods. As soon as that happened, there was buyers' resistance all over the world.

Mr. Osborne: I am sure that the hon. Member with his expert knowledge would not wish to mislead the House. He said that Japan's efforts were reaching their post-war peak. Surely he is aware that Japan is only operating five million spindles now against 13—million spindles pre-war, so she cannot be near her postwar peak.

Mr. Rhodes: I am saying that it is her post-war peak. I am not talking about her pre-war peak. It was then nine million to 10 million spindles. Her postwar peak was reached in the middle of last year.

Mr. Osborne: The hon. Member is not suggesting that is the limit to which she is going in the coming years?

Mr. Rhodes: Certainly not. Neither am I deceived by the reasons for the reduction in Japanese output at the present time, and I hope nobody else on the Front Bench opposite is.
I will tell the House what is the reason for the restriction of output in Japan. It is not because they cannot get rid of their stuff at near-cost prices; they are waiting for the inevitable slump in raw material prices. If hon. Gentlemen will watch this


situation they will in time, I think, agree with me. The Japanese are very astute operators in this market.

Mr. Holt: The hon. Member says that Japan is waiting for the drop in raw material prices. Does he not accept that in point of fact that is what the cotton producers are doing throughout the world?

Mr. Rhodes: Yes, of course it is; but in the case of Japan a lot of people have the idea that Japan is prepared to operate at any time irrespective of conditions in the raw material market, and I am saying that Japan is doing this for that particular reason. So much for overseas. At home it was the cost of living, prices too high, talk of crises, talk of an early Election, fear of the restriction of credit with the buyers holding on—and a Tory Government did the rest. The hon. Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle), was nearly right when she said that it was aggravated. In November the Government said one thing and in the Budget they said another.
In November, the Government acted on a basis of restriction of credit which was to curtail consumer goods. When they came to the Budget, the Government had to change their minds because of pressure of opinion and the situation in Lancashire, and they told the House and the country that they could now carry on with the 1951 amount of consumption in consumer goods.
I do not want to weary the House, but the point I am making is a constructive one, and I feel that what I have said is quite necessary in order to point the way to what I am about to say. In the debate last week on the Export Guarantees Bill, I expressed the opinion that this question of exports of consumer goods was really approaching a new phase.
I said that at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century competition in Western Europe for consumer goods for overseas trade was coming to an end, that a new pattern was emerging. I believe myself that there is a big shake-out taking place. So the question we have to ask ourselves is: How much can the trade itself and the Government influence and shape events? One thing that no trade or Government can do is to force someone to buy stuff

that he does not want. Let us approach the matter from the practical end. The important thing is that we should be on the spot, ready and able to supply when trade revives.
I do not wish to quote figures to the House—there are masses of them to draw from—but the statistics that are available show that in each successive depression or slump, such as in 1919–22 and 1929–32 which both followed the same pattern, there is a recession, a raw material collapse, and then the entry by the low-cost producers of the world into markets that we had previously enjoyed. I contend that it is the two years after a slump has begun that set the pattern of how much trade can be expected to be retained when trade begins to flow again.
If we neglect any opportunity from now on, we shall rue the day. None of our textile industries in this country can exist solely on home trade. They must have a life-line overseas. Whilst the slump is on, it is not possible to distinguish between the efficient and the inefficient, because when distress selling is taking place the efficient and the inefficient are doing the same thing, often selling at half price. Prices fall further and the slump touches bottom at the moment raw materials reach this lowest price.
Improvement in trade follows when there is confidence that no more money will be lost in a falling market. It is then, and then alone, that the conversion factor comes into its own. It does so in the costing of any yard of cloth. It sorts out the efficient firm from the inefficient firm at that very moment. It is precisely at that time that the pattern of trade will be determined for many years. It is important that the early purchases should be from us. A slump every now and again suits a low-cost producing country down to the ground; such countries get into new markets. This time we must see to it that we are organised as an industry to cope with the situation.
With regard to cotton, the President of the Board of Trade should immediately, if he has not already done so, start consultations with the Cotton Board, and with the trade generally on the revival of British Overseas Cottons Limited or another organisation to improve on it. It was formed in the early war years to co-ordinate the different interests concerned with the making of cotton cloth—


the spinners, weavers, finishers and converters. The right hon. Gentleman must not be fobbed off by objections from interests at the converter end. He should look at the problem as a whole. Let him examine it, take honest opinion on it and then act on it.
I am convinced that there will have to be co-ordination of effort not only between the Government and the industry but between every branch of the industry if we are going to do what I have in mind, namely, that we should hold on to every yard of cotton exports from now on. I have warned the President of the Board of Trade that the possibility is that any yard of cloth that we lose in exports during the next year or two will never be regained. The danger of losing our share in world wool markets is not so dangerous as in cotton. Nevertheless, we cannot afford to lose a yard.
There again, I would ask the President of the Board of Trade to consult with the Wool Export Corporation and the Export Credits Guarantee Department, together with all the other interests in the trade, including chambers of commerce, and get down to a basis where we can have a better spearhead for our exports, particularly in the dollar markets. I am not grumbling about what the wool trade has done. It has the finest record of exports to the dollar market, considering the difficulties that it had to face immediately the war was over and the way it was run down in regard to personnel. It has done a marvellous job. But we must now think about the preservation of its export trade, and I ask the right hon. Gentleman to act now.
My next constructive proposal is this. Never in this century has there been a better financial background to the textile industry than now. The hon. and gallant Member for Rochdale agreed that was so. He said that it was in good shape from a financial point of view. It is. It has been enabled to make profits which are now of great advantage to it. I say to my hon. Friends on this side of the House: in an industry which is dependent upon raw materials coming from abroad, which is subject to the vicissitudes of either fashion or demand all over the world, if the firms which are engaged in it are not allowed to make a profit in good times, who is going to pay the losses in bad times? [HON. MEMBERS:

"Hear, hear."] Yes, but I am coming on to something which is not so palatable. It could be that with the selling of stocks at distress prices, firms will not be showing such good results before very long.

Mr. Osborne: They are not doing so now.

Mr. Rhodes: Of course, but even now there are firms who are paying 25 per cent., 30 per cent. and in one case 45 per cent. in dividends. I say emphatically that that is wrong at this time.

Sir Ian Fraser: Would they be paying those dividends on the nominal capital or on the capital used in the business?

Mr. Rhodes: I do know a look at the statistics part of the "Economist" will not only give the hon. Gentleman that information, but will also give the yield against the money values which the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

Mr. Nabarro: The hon. Gentleman has raised on many occasions the allegation which he has just made about the textile industry. Surely he will agree that the rate of distribution in the textile group of industries since the war has been very modest indeed, more modest than in any other group of industries.

Mr. Rhodes: So modest that it is the highest in the century. [An HON. MEMBER: "No."] Yes. I ask the President of the Board of Trade: please conserve the assets that are now in the industry. Do not allow anybody from now on, in co-operation with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to distribute dividends in excess of 5 per cent. I ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to pay particular attention to this point. We must not lose the assets that the trade now have in their possession. High dividends should not be distributed.

Air Commodore Harvey: rose—

Mr. Rhodes: I am afraid I cannot give way. Time is getting late now, and I want to allow somebody in before 7 o'Clock. [Interruption.] It is only fair.
The next point is about the D scheme. Can the President of the Board of Trade tell us whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer was serious when he spoke


about consumption being as high in 1952 as it was in 1951? I do not for a moment think that that is going to be achieved. If this is to be one of the things which the Chancellor hopes will help to revive the textile industry during the coming months, I do not believe it will be done. This D scheme, with all its anomalies, will make it difficult for that result to happen. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is now the boss at the Board of Trade, so far as the consumer goods industries are concerned, and I ask him to take off the whole of the Purchase Tax from goods within the textile field, as a gesture to the textile industries. There are so many anomalies that I think he will be glad when he has done it, if he will but take the plunge.
Another point is—at The Hague at the present time there is an organisation under N.A.T.O. for ordering and distributing textile goods. I understand that considerable orders are being given out and that most of them have been taken up by countries such as Italy, Belgium and France. Would the right hon. Gentleman see to it that we are well represented on that organisation, and that at least we have a chance of getting orders if we are at all competitive?
I am not as pessimistic as some people may be. We can weather this storm. It may be that there is a contraction, but the energy and the capacity of the people of Lancashire and Yorkshire, the West of England and of Scotland, will be equal to the task.

6.56 p.m.

Mr. Harold Sutcliffe: I am sure that the House welcomed the last remark made by the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Rhodes). I particularly endorse it, and I think we can all agree with much that he said.
Except for one contribution, in which some appalling suggestions were made to which I am not going to refer now, so fantastic were they, the debate has been in the nature of a Council of State, so often advocated for debates in this House

but so seldom attained. I hope that the remainder of the debate will be continued in that strain. It is only in that way that we can fully do justice to the very serious situation which has arisen in the textile industry.
Some of us who were here in the 1930's remember the similar situation which arose then. It is, indeed, a disappointment and a sad day for us that something on similar lines seems to be starting, although we hope and pray that it will not develop into the depths of unemployment we reached in those days. Any hon. Member who has any regard for the people in his constituency must feel depressed at the thought that we are passing into a very anxious time. We gradually restored the position before the war started in 1939, but the trouble about the present slump—if it is to be a slump—is that it has come about so suddenly and is so thoroughly unexpected.
One thing that stands out is that it is through no fault of the present Government. At Christmas, 1949, there was a small recession in the spinning section of the industry. Again, in August and September, 1950, mills were stocking cotton yarn because salesmen could not find a ready market. Then came Korea, which rescued that situation. Last autumn, there was a recession and the position has not improved materially since that time. That was many weeks before the General Election. Therefore, I say again that the present position is certainly no fault of this Government; nor, as has been said by other speakers, are we alone in this matter. It is worldwide. Six months before last Christmas they were on short time in the United States—and the position has not improved since then—and the same situation applies in Japan and India. Many reasons have been given for this and—

It being Seven o'Clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of The CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS under Standing Order No. 7 (Time for taking Private Business), further Proceeding stood postponed.

Orders of the Day — EALING CORPORATION BILL (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

7.1 p.m.

Mr. Angus Maude: We are able to congratulate ourselves for a short time in that this is a Motion on which there is likely to be no contention between the political parties in the House. The parties concerned in the Bill are the Ealing Borough Council, which has a Conservative majority, and the Middlesex County Council, which also has a Conservative majority; and, I would add, that is likely still to be the case after the local government elections in April. The case for this Conservative county council, in its opposition to the Bill, will be argued, I understand, by two hon. Members from the benches opposite, which gives an all-party flavour to the debate.
It would, perhaps, be for the convenience of the House if I started by saying that, unlike the case which so often occurs in Private Bills, there is here no question of any extension of boundaries being sought by the Ealing Borough Council. This is simply a Bill to achieve county borough status for a non-county borough.
I make no secret of this fact: very serious questions of principle are involved concerning the local government of Greater London, and I shall refer to this in some detail later in my speech. I want to start, however, by dealing with the case for making Ealing a county borough, leaving on one side for a moment the question of the results which might flow from that in Middlesex and in Greater London.
The county council involved—Middlesex—governs the largest county in the country outside London. Ealing, the borough which is promoting the Bill, is the largest non-county borough in Great Britain. We have here, therefore, a case in which the largest non-county borough and, outside London, the largest county council are together involved. The borough of Ealing was incorporated in 1901, so that it had the happy chance of celebrating its golden jubilee last year in the year of the Festival of Britain.
At the 1951 census, Middlesex had a population of 2,268,776, and the population of Ealing was 187,306. The Bill would remove from Middlesex 8.3 per cent. of its population and 8.4 per cent. of its rateable value—surprisingly level figures. Middlesex, without Ealing, would still be the largest county outside London. It would still retain nearly 140,000 acres, more than two million population and a rateable value of over £20 million. Finally, in what I am afraid are rather dull preliminary statistics, I should perhaps say that Ealing is at present larger than no fewer than 66 of the existing 83 county boroughs in the country and has a higher rateable value than 69 of them.
Why does Ealing seek county borough status? In Ealing we believe that Middlesex County Council has too large a population to enable certain matters to be properly administered, and we believe that Ealing is too large a borough to come under the authority of a county council. We believe that a population of 2,250,000 is too large to be governed as one unit, even with a delegation of powers in matters of education, health and welfare. We believe that a county councillor who has no fewer than 26,000 constituents with whom he should keep in touch cannot possibly remain in close touch with them and still take part in administering these complicated matters.
This ceases to be local government and becomes something very closely approaching central government. I understand that the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Messer) is closely concerned in the opposition to this Bill, and I am very happy to call him to my aid in this matter because, with that very clear judgment and authority which we always expect from him in local government matters, he used some words in the debate of 26th April, 1950, on the Ilford Corporation Bill, which seem to me to put our case better than I could possibly hope to put it. He said:
We cannot go on claiming the need for extended social services unless we create the instrument by which they can be administered. What is happening? We are in an anomalous position. We are pressing for expansion of the social services, and saying that the minor local authorities cannot do the job As a consequence, we give the work to a larger authority which has to delegate part of its work to the minor authority, and we get such hybrid things as divisional executives and such completely anachronistic things as area health committees, where county councils plus representatives of a local authority form a


committee to do work which could quite easily be done by an independent local committee.
Nothing can be more sensible than that, Mr. Speaker, and I am sure that the House would agree with it. The hon. Member for Tottenham went on:
What is fearsome about this is that our failure to face up to this situation means that central Government steps in and does work for which it was never intended, and we are watching a passing from local government to central Government of powers which the central Government is not the best type of instrument to use. I mention this because I hope the House will not accept the idea that we cannot face this problem. It has to be faced, and unless we do, local government is doomed to disappear."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th April, 1950; Vol. 474, c. 1074.]
That seems to me to sum up the case of Ealing Corporation on this Bill better than I could possibly do it. Ealing believes that if a service can be run locally, it should be run locally by people on the spot who are in close touch with those whom they represent. There are 60 local men and women on the Ealing Borough Council. They ask, very naturally, why they should have to apply each year to the county council, for example, for a licence before they can promote or permit an entertainment in any of their 1,000 acres of parks and recreation grounds.
They ask, why, when the borough council already maintains 22 miles of existing trunk and county roads in the borough, not to mention 130 miles of district roads, they should not control and maintain the remaining 16 miles of trunk and county roads.
With 65 primary and secondary schools under their management, they want to know why the Ealing Corporation should not run the education service in their own right in the borough, instead of by delegation from the county council. Middlesex is a good education authority. There is no question about that whatsoever. Ealing, as a former Part III authority, now an excepted district, has very wide powers of delegation given to it, but the county council supervision still extends beyond financial control and beyond questions of major policy into matters of day-to-day administration which, as I shall show with examples, involves very serious delays on matters of quite minor importance.
The people of Ealing ask, quite naturally, why their local representatives cannot run the local health service in a proper alliance with the sanitary services which are already under the control of the borough council. The medical officer of health for Ealing, unlike his counterparts in other Middlesex boroughs, has remained since 1948 a borough council officer, giving about 60 per cent. of his time to the county council. He has eight full-time and six part-time doctors and 210 other staff under him.
At present there is an area health committee which covers Ealing and Acton, and Ealing has on it seven representatives out of a total of 24 on the committee. Even this committee's recommendations are nearly all subject to the over-riding jurisdiction of the county health committee and one of its sub-committees, on neither of which the area medical officer of health sits. Nor is he permitted to attend it.
In fact, the Ealing medical officer receives his copies of the minutes of the meetings of these committees more than two months after they are held, and that seems to us to be an example of the sort of difficulties which are put in the way of an efficient local administration. Inevitably, in this sort of system one gets examples of wasteful duplication of time and effort on the part of officials and committees dealing with the same problem in probably exactly the same way.
I would emphasise to the House that this is not an example of local people with big ideas who are thirsting for power and are trying simply to up-grade a small authority into something larger. I want to give the House a couple of examples which will indicate that the present situation actually results in hardship to ordinary men and women whom the social services are designed to serve.
I hope the House will bear with me if I mention these two examples. I shall try not to take too long about them, but it is essential to get the discussion away from purely academic administrative questions and the theory of local government reform and to show how these things affect the ordinary men and women in the borough and in the county.
In October and November, 1949, Ealing borough took up the question of leave of absence for four married women teachers who were expecting babies. It seemed a fairly simple question, but correspondence about the position under the county council's regulations, which were by no means clear, went on nearly six months after the babies were born.
That was bad enough, but there is far more to come. After this, Ealing submitted a firm recommendation to the county council suggesting what sick pay should be granted to these teachers. Eighteen months after that recommendation had been made no decision had been handed down from the county council and the county educational officer had not submitted the matter to the education committee. I do not suggest that this is an example of gross bureaucratic dictatorship by an official. It is not. We have the highest respect for the county education officer, and he was simply trying to keep matters of detail away from a grossly overworked education committee which is trying to cope with a job too large for it.
However, after a strong protest from the borough education officer, the county education officer wrote on 20th February, 1952—this had started in November, 1949—to say that the county council had granted sick pay to the teachers on precisely the basis for which Ealing had asked 18 months earlier. It was actually 19½ months after Ealing made the recommendation that it got precisely the decision for which it had asked in the first place. Meanwhile, the teachers had suffered.
There is an even more glaring example of what can happen. In the spring of 1950 there was some trouble in the staff kitchen of one of the schools in Ealing. After very careful investigation by the borough school meals organiser, the Ealing education committee transferred the cook-supervisor in that school to another school. Some time later there was exactly the same trouble all over again. A sub-committee of the council heard representations from the staff at the school and from the supervisor herself, who was represented at the hearing by a trade union official, and, after a long meeting, decided that the supervisor ought to be dismissed.
The supervisor appealed to the county council staff appeals committee, who ordered that she should be reinstated. The county council could not find her a job outside Ealing and she had to be placed again in her own school. Within a fortnight the staff was seething with trouble again, and it was clear that the children's meals were actually suffering as a result of this. It was again decided to dismiss the supervisor. She again appealed to the county council staff appeals committee and was finally reinstated a second time.
The borough council may have made two mistakes, but they do not think they did. They ask what sort of a system it is that prevents an authority of this size, which has a school meals staff of 436, from dismissing an employee earning £280 a year without taking up hours of the time of officials and councillors of two authorities and then being overridden at the end of it. There are numbers of other cases which I could quote, but I shall not weary the House with them.
I submit that the case for granting county borough status to Ealing can be made on the grounds that it is a viable authority in size and an efficient authority, and that the existing duplication of powers results in inefficiency and in suffering to the inhabitants of Ealing.
For the last part of my speech I must turn to the case against the Bill, which I want to consider quite honestly and frankly and try to see how we can beat the objections. There are, first, the detailed objections which the county council have put forward in their statement against the Bill. The county council claim that the removal of Ealing from Middlesex would inflict:
… very grave injury on the remainder thereof and would seriously disorganise the administration of the important services for which the county council are responsible.
Our view is that that contention is not true. It would make the services in Ealing better and it would relieve the burden on the staff and committees of the county council and enable them to administer better the services over the remainder of the county.
It is also contended by Middlesex County Council that to constitute Ealing a county borough would increase the burden on the ratepayers in the remainder of the county. I have already


said that the removal of Ealing from the Middlesex County Council would remove 8.4 per cent. of rateable value and 8.3 per cent. of population.
Neither I nor anyone else in Ealing proposes to try to contend that it would not mean some extra burden on the ratepayers in the remainder of Middlesex, because it is obvious that the overheads of administration in Middlesex would be spread over a smaller population and a smaller rateable value, but we contend that the extra burden would be very small.
There are one or two other detailed points which the county council makes. They have sought to make capital of the fact that certain services are specifically excluded from the terms of the Bill which Ealing Corporation are promoting. They say that Ealing Borough Council recognise that there are some very important functions which should be discharged by the council of a county borough, but which they are quite unable to discharge. That is grossly misleading and, with respect to the Middlesex County Council, a somewhat tendentious way of putting it in view of the instances which they then proceed to cite: namely, the duties of a fire authority.
Of course, Ealing has in the past run its own fire service, and has run it very well; and it is perfectly capable of doing so in the future. It was, however, felt that the county fire organisation ought to be maintained in the interest of efficiency and service to the remainder of the county. It would, obviously, be ridiculous to upset the operation of the present West Middlesex sewerage authority, which, we are proud to say, is one of the best, if not the best, in the country.

Mr. Frederick Messer: The best.

Mr. Maude: The hon. Member for Tottenham tells me that it is the best—

Mr. Messer: Acknowledged as the best.

Mr. Maude: —but I did not want to appear to be claiming too much for Middlesex.
There is now the question of the famous proviso which was inserted in the Local Government (Boundary Commission) Act, 1945. I ought to refer to this,

since the county council in their statement have made something of a point of it. It is perfectly true that there was in the Local Government (Boundary Commission) Act, 1945, which has since been repealed, a proviso which said that no part of Middlesex should be constituted a county borough. But I must point out that this question was raised on the Committee stage of the Bill, as it then was, by an Amendment which was moved by the then hon. Member for Manchester, Moss Side, seeking to remove this proviso from the Bill.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Hamilton Kerr), who was then Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, pointed out in his reply to the debate on the Amendment on 5th June, 1945, that there were many urgent problems which the Local Government Boundary Commission had in any case to deal with, and that it was felt that the problems of Middlesex Boroughs should be left until later. He therefore resisted the Amendment to delete that proviso. In replying for the Government, however, he never attempted to suggest that the proviso was inserted in order that the position of Middlesex boroughs should be frozen indefinitely.
It is quite wrong to suggest that that proviso excluding Middlesex from the terms of reference of the Local Government Boundary Commission represented the view of that or any other Government that no local government reform should ever take place in Middlesex which would involve the creation of a new county borough. It was clearly pointed out by my hon. Friend, on behalf of the Government, that it was simply a question of not overloading the Boundary Commission, with the great amount of work that they had in any case to do.
Finally, I must deal with the main point of substance which the supporters of the Middlesex County Council make in their opposition to the Bill. This is a question of principle: the question of the reform of the local government of Greater London, of which Middlesex forms a part. It is asked: Ought Ealing to be taken separately in this respect? If county borough status is given to Ealing, even though it is the largest non-county borough in the country, shall we not open the floodgates to a number of other non-county


boroughs and urban districts? I see, for example, one of the Members for Harrow—my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Ian Harvey)—sitting here, and Harrow, as the House knows, with a population of over 200,000, is still an urban district. There are innumerable anomalies in the organisation of local government boundaries and functions in Middlesex.
But ought we, then, to open the way to a process which might convert Middlesex into a complete series of county boroughs? It is asked: Are we, then, prepared to face what would amount to the complete abolition of the Middlesex County Council? That is a question, clearly, which we must face.
In fact, the Middlesex County Council would not disappear entirely. It would remain, at the least—I mean no insult to the members of the Middlesex County Council—a joint sewerage authority and there are, no doubt, other powers which could profitably be preserved. If the hon. Member for Southall (Mr. Pargiter) asks me, for example, as he is entitled to do, whether I should be prepared to try to persuade the House to pass the Bill even though it would mean the dismemberment of Middlesex as an administrative county, I am entitled to ask him another question in exchange: Is he, with a knowledge of local government in Middlesex which is very great and very long, prepared to say that no measure of local government reform should ever take place in Middlesex, or that the present boroughs of Middlesex with populations of between 150,000 and 200,000 should remain in their present condition and should never be upgraded to the status of most-purpose authorities?
I think that the hon. Member would refuse to take that extreme line, and would say, "No doubt, Ealing should be given greater powers, but this must be done as a comprehensive operation taking in the whole of the County of Middlesex." It is this point with which the House in the last resort would have to deal, and on which it will have to take a decision this evening.
I am extremely glad to see my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government on the Treasury Bench tonight, because I want to assure him that the Ealing Corporation has not deliberately gone out of its way to

embarrass him by suddenly precipitating the whole question of local government reform at a time when he has many other weighty problems on his mind.
We think that we are giving the House of Commons a chance to take a positive and constructive step towards solving a problem which has been embarrassing the country for many years. We say that the position has been getting steadily worse. No new county borough has been constituted since 1926. The position in Greater London has been getting worse for a long time, and will continue to get worse.
Over and over again, when the Ilford and Luton Bills came forward, for example, in the last Parliament, and when any question of local government reform arises, we are always told, "It is very difficult; it is an immense problem. We had better postpone it until we have a little more time to deal with it." Even when the Local Government Boundary Commission was set up in 1945, only to be abolished a few years later, we were told that it must not deal with the question of local government reform in Greater London; that that must be excluded and must be postponed even further than the reform of local government elsewhere.
We in Greater London are beginning to feel that we shall never have the question of local government reform in Middlesex tackled at all, because it is a difficult matter. It is an immense problem, and the tendency with busy administrators is always to say, "If we can stave it off a little longer, let us do that." We in Ealing think that the House of Commons now has an opportunity to present to the Government and to the people who are interested in local government reform something which they have never had the opportunity of having before. That is a complete examination which will go on the record in the form of evidence, examination of witnesses and putting of the case by the county council and by its largest non-county borough in Committee upstairs, which will then be on the record as a basis for a future Local Government Boundary Commission to work on.
I think we can go one step beyond that and provide something even more useful. Middlesex County Council has now said—I do not wish to be ungracious, but I think they have been a little late in saying this and are only saying it now under the


pressure of the depositing of the Ealing Corporation Bill—that they are prepared to discuss with the junior authorities greater powers of delegation.
On the other side, Ealing Corporation says—and has specifically stated—that it would be willing to consider certain concessions in the details of the Bill which would go even further towards making it a most-purposes rather than an all-purposes authority and which would make it almost exactly correspondent to that new county borough which the Local Government Boundary Commission recommended for populations of approximately the size of Ealing.
We think that as a result of this willingness to make concessions on the part of Middlesex in the matter of delegation and of the willingness of Ealing to make concessions in the powers they are obtaining under this Bill, the Committee might be able to hammer out the prototype of the new local government authority for the County of Middlesex. That would be a terriffic achievement. It would be something we have never got within miles of having before and something which, if this Bill is rejected on Second Reading tonight, we might never get or at least not get for so many years that the problems will have got almost out of control.
The House of Commons has it in its power tonight to do this and make this very great and constructive contribution to a most difficult problem which is not within measurable sight of solution. It can do that simply by giving this Bill a Second Reading and sending it upstairs to a Committee, I most earnestly and warmly urge the House to take that course and give this Bill a Second Reading tonight.

7.32 p.m.

Mr. G. A. Pargiter: I beg to move, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
This House refuses to give a Second Reading to a Private Bill which will have such far-reaching effects on local government in Middlesex and considers that it is undesirable for a matter of such major importance to be dealt with by Private Bill legislation.
May I first congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing, South (Mr. Maude) upon the able and persuasive way in which he

has presented a case. He must have felt he was skating on rather thin ice on occasions, particularly when he was dealing with what he called in advance some of the objections, which are so manifest, to giving a Second Reading to this Bill.
The Amendment sets out the burden of the case against giving a Second Reading to this Bill. I want first to warn the House that I believe that there are some hon. Members opposite, and there may be some on this side, who suggest, "We will give the Bill a Second Reading tonight and kill it in Committee." That is not a very good method of dealing with the matter.
If it is the intention to kill the Bill, it should be killed now. There should be no argument; if it is good enough to have a Second Reading on the factual evidence alone, it is entitled to get the support of the Committee upstairs. I want to be quite frank about that, because no one would want to say that Ealing is not a well-governed borough. No one would want to say that Ealing has not the resources to carry out the functions it is claiming in this Bill.
It has set out a very good case as to the resources which would be available and Ealing says, equally purely from the point of view of the resources, that this would not make the county less viable as a county—not of itself. That is acceptable, and we are on common ground there.
But the danger is, I am advised, that if this Bill gets a Second Reading the Committee upstairs will not be able to go into the details of the effect of this on other boroughs of Middlesex which are equally entitled to claim county borough status. It would be kept to the very narrow limits of application to Ealing without being able to introduce in the Committee what would be extraneous matters, such as the effect on a large number of boroughs and urban districts in Middlesex which would be entitled to take advantage of the precedent which would be set if the House gave a Second Reading to this Bill. For that reason, I am extremely anxious that the Bill should not go upstairs but should be dealt with here in order that the issue as to the relationship of Ealing to the County of Middlesex and the relationship of Ealing to other districts can be clearly settled.
The first paragraph of the statement on the Bill says:
It is promoted in the interests of the efficient administration of local government in Ealing [and] does not affect the boundaries of any other county district.
It does not affect the boundaries of any other county district, but it is significant that Ealing happens to border on 10 of them, and I can hardly see, with the types of services running all round them as part of the county services, that there will not be some difficulties in the relationship of these boundaries which may well have accounted for the fact that, quite magnanimously, Ealing is prepared to leave the county with the fire service. Otherwise, there would be some difficulties on the question of mutual support but they feel it highly desirable not to embark on that.
I accept that they could run the service quite well, but perhaps I might mention that the practice in Middlesex, as is well known, is that the ambulance service is run under fire service control. It is a health service, but the health department have delegated this service to the fire brigade committee and the communication system of the fire service is used for the purpose of controlling the ambulance service and calling ambulances and so on. It is also a fact that the ambulance service is under the control of the chief fire officer.
This matter has not been touched on, but it is of such importance that I can hardly imagine that Ealing had not thought of it, and I am wondering why they have not referred to it because it is undoubtedly an important point when the question of administration crops up whether Ealing wants to run its ambulance service through the communication system of the fire service or to contract out altogether from the fire service or to have the county committee running the ambulance service. That is one point where questions of administration assume some importance.
I do not wish to detract from the importance of the Borough of Ealing. It claims to be the oldest borough, and I will concede that. I also concede that it has had very lusty growth. It has been a very strong and promising infant, but it did not achieve its population for the purposes of county borough status in accordance with the existing Statutes

until 1925–26, whereas such districts as Willesden achieved a population of 75,000 as far back as between 1891 to 1896. Tottenham achieved that population at that time, and also Hornsey between 1901 and 1904. It will be seen that in some respects they are comparatively new, and what will happen in Hornsey, a very distinguished borough, in the event of this taking place will be that they will say, "We have been established all these years and this relative youngster of Ealing gets county borough status. Obviously, we have to do something about it."
Apart from that, there are other questions, and the wider intention of Parliament in relation to this. What was the intention of all parties in the House in their acceptance of the Education Act of 1944, which specifically transferred functions from Ealing, among other places, to a single local education authority, which it said should be the county? It did this for specific reasons, because of the wider obligations and implications of education. When these small districts were education authorities, Ealing was responsible for its primary education. It has never been responsible for its secondary or higher education. In fact, I believe it is the purpose that the technical college situated within the boundaries of Ealing shall remain a county service and that Ealing will pay for the places they want in that particular college.

Mr. Maude: This matter of the technical college does need qualifying. There is no question of Ealing wanting to leave to Middlesex a technical college which it could not operate. In fact, of course, Ealing is claiming to be the technical education authority, and it could have asked in this Bill to take over the new technical college. But since arrangements have been made with the county that, for mutual convenience, it should be built and used by the whole county or by a large part as a catchment area, it was a condition on the part of Ealing that instead of keeping this for themselves they should seek to leave it to the county.

Mr. Pargiter: The hon. Member has made my case for me regarding that particular service. It is because technical colleges and further education generally must cover a wider area. In order to give variety of training in a technical college it must have a very wide catchment area. In other words, one county district autho-


rity cannot run a technical college, because technical colleges must have a particular bias for particular services. If a technical college service is to be run efficiently, it must have the widest possible catchment area. In a technical college one has to specialise—not in technical schools, but in technical colleges. In Middlesex we have specialised, and we have planned our technical college with that specialisation in view. There are many scholars from Ealing who are going to other technical colleges in other parts of the county to receive the particular type of education they are seeking. That is the important part about it.
It goes even wider. There are standard arrangements between the Home Counties, because even Middlesex does not cover in certain parts so wide a field as it might. So we have reciprocal arrangements with Surrey and London, and on the other county borders, and so on. We take people from them, and in certain cases we send students to other colleges. That is a very good arrangement, but does it help that arrangement if we stick a lot more cogs in the wheel? Technical colleges, above all things, lend themselves to a very highly specialised type of administration. It is not so much a question of the ownership of these services as the function by which the services are given. So on those grounds I would say that the hon. Member for Ealing, South has helped to make my case.
It is highly desirable that we should run it because of the wideness of the catchment area it must serve. That seems to be one reason alone for the rejection of this Bill. But it comes back to the whole question of the width of operation of service. It must operate a wider service. What is true of technical colleges is becoming increasingly true of all forms of higher education. The number of children who come from Ealing to other schools in other areas in the county of Middlesex, quite apart from technical education, is very consideragle indeed.
Let us look at the health service. It is stated that
Ealing had well-developed health services prior to 5th July, 1948. Since that date the Medical Officer of Health has given part-time service to the County Council, as also have certain other officers in the Health Department.

To say the least of it, that is an understatement. The fact is they became county officers. They did part-time service, and lesser part-time service to the health service in the Borough of Ealing, so that the position is precisely the reverse of that stated in the statement in support of the Bill. In fact, they are county officers and would have to be taken out of the county service, if they consented to go, and would go into the service of the Borough of Ealing. There again we have to consider the difference between the statement here and the facts. I am not saying it was done intentionally, but the fact is they are not officers within the control of the Borough of Ealing at the present time.

Mr. Maude: The medical officer of health is a borough officer.

Mr. Pargiter: No. The Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Booth, is in fact an officer of the county council.

Mr. Maude: The hon. Member must excuse me, but that is not so. It is so in the case of most boroughs, but in the case of Ealing there was a special arrangement by which Dr. Booth remained in the service of Ealing Borough, and gave 60 per cent. of his time to the county as a part-time servant of the county. It is an exception.

Mr. Pargiter: Quite frankly, I recollect the negotiations and my recollection is that the greater period of time was given to the borough, and he in fact became a county officer. We actually approved his appointment for that particular service. However, I will concede that. But certainly the other officers are county officers and I gather that the hon. Member will not wish to pursue that. We can accept it that the vast majority of the officers are county officers. I will examine the position with regard to Dr. Booth and see what we can do about it.
Again we have the intention of the Health Act to transfer certain services to larger authorities, and I believe the arrangement works quite well. The service has in fact been very largely decentralised. We have not kept a tight hand on this. I had something to do with the arrangements for the de-centralisation of that service. After it was transferred to the County Council we were not able to transfer back to Ealing, because it


was not permitted by law. But we divided Middlesex up into 10 convenient areas. We added Acton to Ealing for the purpose of forming an area, and I believe it functions quite well. We have heard no complaints about it. So they have adequate powers to deal with services with which they want to deal in their own localities. I would not say that the thing is perfect, but I would say it is working very well.
If Ealing gets this Bill, what do we do with Acton? We should have to do something with Acton and we should have to begin to re-cast the Health Service arrangements. When we consider an administrative machine of this kind the whole question is much wider than saying that Ealing would function on its own. Before we make a change it is highly important to look at the whole ramifications with which we shall be concerned in making that change. It seems to me therefore on those grounds that that is another point in support of my case that Ealing should not get their Bill at this stage.
I appreciate the magnanimity of Ealing in not proposing to take over that section of the Metropolitan Police. I should like to see them try.

Mr. Maude: That has nothing to do with the case either way.

Mr. Pargiter: I wonder if they really thought they could get police powers, even if they tried? We have none as far as the standing joint committee of Middlesex is concerned, and we are never likely to get any either, so I do not think that Ealing's chance would be very great.
I want to deal with one or two other factors. The first is that this, obviously, cannot be presented as the unanimous desire of the people of Ealing. It cannot even be represented as the unanimous desire of Ealing Borough Council because out of 60 members—and this I will put to hon. Members who might be inclined to vote for this Bill in the belief that there was enough demand for it in Ealing—only 34 actually voted in favour of the proposal. That, surely, is a very narrow margin in a very large borough.

Squadron Leader A. E. Cooper: To be fair to the Ealing Corporation, I think the hon. Gentleman should say how the remaining 26 voted. He

has created the impression that out of the 60, 34 voted in favour and 26 against. In point of fact, as he knows, it was nothing like that.

Mr. Pargiter: There are 34 positive people who want this. There are some who did not vote and some who voted against it. But, quite apart from that, the case which has been presented is that of an insistent demand from Ealing for these powers. One cannot have it both ways; one can only take note of those who positively want it. Supposing we say, as we should in a proper democracy, that the members of the council are a reflection of those they represent—probably those they represent would in many instances deny that—the proportion becomes 34 people who want it as against 26 who either do not want it or do not care whether they have it or not.
Is that the basis upon which a claim of this kind can really be established? I agree, of course, that there is a good case for examination and alteration of local government. I am not denying that, but we cannot get away from the fact that when the Boundary Commission was set up it was unanimously agreed in this House that Middlesex was excluded from its provisions regarding the creation of county boroughs within that county. That was done explicitly because it was recognised that Middlesex was in a peculiar position compared with the rest of the country. Whoever tackles this question will have to tackle Middlesex in a special way.
Let us have a look at the effect. I repeat what I said that if this Bill goes upstairs the Committee will be pledged to consider, not the wide effects which the giving of these powers will have on the rest of the County of Middlesex, but whether or not Ealing shall have these powers. Ealing, of course, would make out a very good case as to why they should carry out the function with which they are charged.
I believe that in Middlesex there are nine boroughs with a population of more than 75,000 each. There are two urban districts with populations of more than 75,000. In fact, there is one urban district with a very much larger population than the vaunted population of the Borough of Ealing which is seeking borough powers. This thing has not been going on in a vacuum and fought out by Ealing


alone. There has been a good deal of consultation between certain boroughs in Middlesex—not public, but private consultation—and Ealing is the spearhead of a movement in which at least six out of the others are interested. If this Bill goes through, the others are already queueing up ready to put forward their own claims.
What would be the position of this House if we agreed to this? Could we then disagree with the others? The county council have provided a statement and a map which shows at one end the authorities with a population of below 75,000 and one or two other odd bits here and there which are also put below the 75,000. The vast mass of the county is concentrated within 11 areas, each of which could and undoubtedly will put forward a similar claim. They are only waiting to see the result of this Bill before lodging their own.
I say quite deliberately that this is not an isolated movement on the part of Ealing, but a concerted movement in which other authorities are interested. If this Bill goes through—it has been presented very persuasively in the hope that it will—it would be the end of Middlesex as a viable county. There is no question about that because the other authorities are only waiting their opportunity to come forward with similar Bills.
I am not arguing at this stage whether Middlesex as a county should remain. Many reasons might be adduced why it should not. I am only concerned that it should not be extinguished by these particular means. If it is going to be extinguished, let it be done properly. Let us even take it out of the arena of local government reform and deal with it as an urgent and pressing problem on its own. I warn hon. Members that when they tackle this matter they will find a lot of other problems.
I ask the Minister of Housing and Local Government how he would like to have 10 or 12 county boroughs added to those authorities with whom he will be negotiating on the outskirts of London, and whether he will examine the effect on the services that feed their way through Middlesex to London, and so on. On all counts, therefore, I submit that this Bill should be rejected at this stage. I do not say that because I have no regard for Ealing. After all, I represent a part

of it, which I am very happy to do. I regard Ealing as being very highly placed among the public authorities of this country both as regards its ability and its efficiency. But, having given it that, there is no reason to give it more at this particular stage, and, therefore, I ask the House to reject this Bill.

Mr. William Irving: I beg to second the Amendment.

8.0 p.m.

Mr. Ian Harvey: I intervene in this discussion as a member of a local authority larger than Middlesex, which gives me considerable sympathy with what the hon. Member for Southall (Mr. Pargiter) has said, and as the representative of a constituency which has an urban district council area larger than Ealing, which gives me some additional sympathy with what my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, South (Mr. Maude) put forward in a most eloquent and measured way.
I feel that the whole of this subject is bound up with our consideration of local government reform and I most earnestly hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government will be able to tell us when he will be prepared to tackle this urgent problem. For that reason I think we should be exceedingly careful when considering any radical reform of local government, particularly in the London area, because London is one of those areas which at present is complicated by the vast ramifications of London County Council which impinge on the Home Counties. In my opinion the ramifications of county councils are far too great and I think it will be agreed that county councils, Middlesex among them, are endeavouring to carry out more than they are equipped to do.
I am quite convinced that unilateral action with regard to one single borough council in a county council area, such as it is intended in this Bill, is not a practical proposition. I do not hesitate to say, though I do not speak with the authority of the Harrow Urban District Council—which we all hope very much will be a borough itself before long—that if this request by Ealing were successful we, as a numerically superior organisation, would have equal claims to have our case considered if we so wished.
The hon. Member for Southall dealt with an aspect of this matter which I think is most important. It is the question whether or not we should allow this matter to go any further having regard to the fact that the practical application of this Bill is not desirable at the present time. To me that is the most important consideration. I listened very carefully to the hon. Member when he was discussing that aspect of the Bill. He said that if it went upstairs it would be only open to the Committee to discuss the whole proposition as it applied to Ealing alone.
I put it to the House that that in itself is not a bad thing. We have already had references to the Luton Bill and the Ilford Bill, and I think the hon. Member put his finger on the pulse of the matter when he said that other Bills were likely to come forward. Therefore, the House is faced with either having similar Bills coming forward to receive similar treatment or letting this Bill go forward for consideration in Committee in order that some of the very intricate and very valuable points put forward by the hon. Member for Southall might be considered in greater detail.
That is the main question and I was not altogether convinced by the argument of the hon. Member for Southall that because Ealing Corporation were not unanimous in putting this forward, it should not come forward at all. After all, there are Acts of Parliament which have gone forward from this House without unanimity and yet have proved none the less valid.

Mr. Pargiter: While I would not wish to imply that there must be unanimity I said that there should be at least a large measure of agreement.

Mr. Harvey: That is perfectly reasonable and I think there was a large measure of agreement among the members of the Council. There is sufficient measure of support for this Bill for it to receive the consideration of the House despite the argument the hon. Member put forward on that issue.

Mr. David Jones: The hon. Member seemed to start off his speech by arguing against the principle

of piecemeal variation of local authority boundaries and powers. Now he seems to have entirely switched over and is supporting the Bill. Would he say exactly where he stands?

Mr. Harvey: I am very much obliged to the hon. Member for underlining the quandary I am in which, in fact, makes it difficult to reach a decision. I agree that it is not a practical proposition to take this piecemeal action with regard to Ealing, but I see no reason why this House, with its powers, should not consider this proposition in greater detail in order to deal with the points the hon. Member for Southall made and to ex-mine it in Committee where more time is available and every possible source of information can be consulted. Otherwise, we shall continue to have this stalemate of Bills coming up and being sent back without further reconsideration of the facts.
If we were all agreed that there was need for local government reform, this action should be taken at once and no Bill rejected, but I believe that all of us—and most of us here are concerned with local government—think there is need to investigate the present system of local government. We have to decide how far centralisation brings the benefits claimed by the hon. Member for Southall and how far decentralisation brings the actual machinery of government closer to local interests, which was well outlined by the hon. Member for Ealing, South.
Therefore, in reply to the question put by the hon. Member for The Hartlepools (Mr. D. Jones) and in summary of the point I make, I think this is not an immediately practical proposition and that there are aspects of the Bill which require further investigation. I do not think this is a Measure that should be summarily turned down. It is a Measure that would benefit from going upstairs to a Committee. Until my right hon. Friend is prepared to bring forward a major scheme of local government reform, which many of us think is long overdue and is now urgent, I would not be prepared to see the Bill go further than the Committee stage. But we owe it to ourselves and those concerned in local government to let it go forward for examination in greater detail.

8.9 p.m.

Mr. George Benson: The detailed exchanges between my hon. Friend the Member for Southall (Mr. Pargiter) and the hon. Member for Ealing, South (Mr. Maude) show quite clearly that this House is not the place where a final decision should be taken on a complex problem like this. If this Bill is given a Second Reading, it will go upstairs to a Committee and the Committee will be able to deal in far more detail than we can with its pros and cons. It will be for that Committee, which is an organ of this House, appointed by this House, to decide whether the Bill should go through or not.
I am not particularly concerned with Ealing. What I am concerned with is the very general problem of local government reform that this House will have to face sooner or later. This has been a pressing problem for very many years. Local government reform is something that ought to take place with a reasonable degree of regularity if the change in social, political and economic organisation of this country progresses at anything like the rate it has done over the last 30 or 40 years.
Local government reform was due to be dealt with before the war; but since the war very drastic changes have taken place, not as a result of the normal development of local authorities but of legislative action in this House and a very important part of our local authorities—the non-county boroughs—have found themselves steadily stripped of a large number of functions that they had performed with very great efficiency. They have lost gas and electricity to the public corporations; and to the county they have lost either the actual administration or, at any rate, the final authority in fire, planning, local health, education and the police.
Those changes may have been good or they may have been bad. It depends very largely on the non-county borough that lost those services and the county that acquired them. In the case of a tiny non-county borough, there may well have been a very considerable increase in efficiency; but that does not always apply. I can think of some tiny non-county boroughs in some counties where even the transfer from the small non-county

borough would mean a loss in efficiency because the county itself was hopelessly inefficient.
To suggest an increase in efficiency by transferring services from Ealing to the county is quite untenable. Ealing is sufficiently large to maintain a highly efficient municipal service of any type whatever. Indeed, I am not sure that there is not a loss of efficiency in transferring to a very large authority many of the services which Ealing—as a medium sized authority compared with the county—could render. While this very rapid process of attrition of non-county boroughs was taking place the Boundary Commission was sitting, and although non-county boroughs resented and resisted the transfer of their functions, at any rate while the Boundary Commission was sitting, there was hope that when it reported the various anomalies that had been created would be rectified.
But the Boundary Commission Report has been shelved, apparently indefinitely, and it is quite impossible for the House to expect the large non-county boroughs to tolerate, or at any rate accept willingly, the loss of functions which they themselves were performing efficiently and which they now know, to their cost, are being hampered by the transfer to the county.
With the very strong resentment that exists in the non-county boroughs, the House must expect that the larger ones will continue to take the only steps that are open to them; that is, to apply to the House for county borough status. That is the only way in which they can regain the functions they have lost, and I think the House should pause before it says, in effect, to non-county boroughs, "No matter what your size, no matter what your case, we shall turn it down without allowing it to go to the Committee for careful and detailed examination."
I know very little about Ealing. I will not go so far as to say that I am unconcerned about Ealing, but when the hon. Member for Ealing, South, was speaking he said a number of things that struck home very closely to me, as the Member for Chesterfield. He gave examples of intolerable delay. In Chesterfield we claim to be a highly efficient local authority. There are few authorities of any size whatsoever that


had a higher status in education than Chesterfield; yet we are constantly experiencing the troubles and delay of frustration and inefficiency. It takes months to get a decision even upon details and on very small points which would have been decided forthwith before the services were transferred.
Taking the broad, general case—I do not say that it applies to Middlesex—counties can frequently be very bad administrative units. I am not now referring to the efficiency of all counties; they vary enormously and, on the whole, they are far more inefficient than the urban areas; but they can be bad administrative units because of their size and also because in these large areas there is very frequently no community of interest between one part and another. That is particularly the case where there is a mixture of urban and rural populations.
Perhaps the most striking example of lack of community of interest is a Lancashire non-county borough—Stretford. Stretford is right in the south of Lancashire; in fact, it is right in the middle of the Manchester conurbation; but because it is a non-county borough many of its services have been transferred to the county of Lancashire, which stretches nearly 100 miles from Stretford, right up into the Lake District. There is no possible community of interest there. It is fantastic that Stretford should find its services transferred to a county authority from which it is shut off by the expansion of Manchester.
It seems to me ridiculous to impose upon efficient urban areas the inefficiency of county administration and then refuse them the right to apply to have their case heard by a Committee which can go into details.

Mr. Messer: Does the hon. Member know that the County of Middlesex is completely urban?

Mr. Benson: I am arguing the general case why the House should pass these Bills of non-county boroughs so that they may go to the Committee. I am not arguing the case of Ealing; I am arguing the general case, which involves Ealing.
If we are to have a large scheme of local government reform, or even if Middlesex as a unit were to be considered,

the case for this Bill might be weakened; but at present there is no prospect whatsoever of local government reform along the lines of the Boundary Commission Report. If we refuse a Second Reading to this Bill what we do is tell the non-county boroughs that even if they have a good case they cannot have it heard before a Committee and that there is no possibility of escape from the dead hand of county administration.

8.20 p.m.

Mr. John Hay: With one remark made by the hon. Member for Southall (Mr. Pargiter) in his speech opposing the Second Reading, I, and I think most hon. Members, in whatever part of the House they may sit, entirely agree—that it would be unwise and, I suggest, undignified if this House were to give the Bill a Second Reading and then try and kill it in Committee. A well-known Member of this House many years ago—and I forget who it was—said of a Measure he did not like, "Take it upstairs and cut its dirty throat." I suggest that that treatment would be quite inappropriate to a Measure of this kind, which as the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benson) has said, raises some acute issues relating to local government as a whole.
I want to deal with some of the arguments which were advanced by the hon. Member for Southall, particularly those which apply to Ealing, and which are occasionally put forward on debates of this kind. I hope the hon. Member for Chesterfield will forgive me if I do not follow him on the somewhat broad plane which he has been traversing, for I want to relate my remarks more closely to Ealing, although I may say that I entirely agree with what he said.
May I make my own position clear? I am a county Member; I sit for a county seat in this House; but I feel, very strongly, personally, about the case for the non-county borough which has reached a size, as in the case of Ealing, where it feels it can be better than the county authority at the job of providing truly local government for those living within its borders. It is high time that this House made up its mind on the point.
The major objection which is always put forward on occasions like this, and particularly in the case of Middlesex, is that if one gives a Second Reading to such a Bill as this and sends it to Committee,


that sets a very dangerous precedent. It is said that if we do that, then all sorts of other boroughs will at once make similar applications for county borough status. It was said by the hon. Member for Southall that if this Bill were approved, Ealing would be leading a sort of ugly rush by other boroughs and urban districts towards county borough and borough status within the county of Middlesex.
I do not understand that argument at all, because if everybody is so satisfied in the County of Middlesex with the wonderful service which that county council provides, and which is set out in some detail in its memorandum in opposition to the Bill, then it seems strange that these other local authorities should be eager to ask for county borough status.

Mr. Messer: The hon. Gentleman does not know much about local government.

Mr. Hay: I frankly admit that I do not know as much about it as does the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Messer), but surely the point is that if a borough such as Ealing says it wants county borough status, then I should have thought that the other authorities, if they were highly satisfied with the kind of government which the county council was providing for them, would say to Ealing, "You may think so, but we are happy as we are and we prefer to stay as we are."
Let us assume, however, that the hon. Member for Southall is correct when he says that other authorities would follow Ealing. Let us assume that this Bill is given a Second Reading, that Ealing becomes a county borough and that all the other local authorities in the Middlesex County Council area make similar applications. What will happen? The hon. Member for Southall said it would be the end of Middlesex as a county council, and he pointed out that Ealing was very magnanimous in suggesting that the county council might still have some kind of truncated existence as a sewerage authority, as a fire authority, and so on.
When the point is made that Middlesex County Council will cease to exist except in that way, I must ask, "Why not?" I say quite frankly and sincerely. "Why not?" For what really useful purpose does this vast, sprawling, local authority exist? What service does it

provide that could not equally conveniently and, I suggest, far better be provided by a number of more individual and more compact local authorities than the Middlesex County Council? That is the view I take. I do not see that there is anything which the county of Middlesex can do which the other local councils could not do on a far more satisfactory basis if they were given the power, and personally I cannot see that it would be fatal to Middlesex as a county if some other boroughs, if not all of them, followed the precedent of Ealing.
But if they do not, and if Ealing is the only one of these boroughs inside the Middlesex County Council area to take this step, and if all the remainder stayed as they are, I can imagine the Middlesex County Council being quite happy about the situation. Yet they say in their statement that if Ealing is allowed to leave, and Ealing alone, and if none of the others follow, that would be extremely detrimental to everybody inside the Middlesex County Council area. That raises a number of other arguments with which I should like to deal.
First of all, they say, "If you allow this you will be permitting the removal from the county council area of an extremely important slice of our rateable value." It was said by the hon. Member for Southall that an increased burden would fall on the ratepayers in the county council's district outside the Borough of Ealing. Let us look at the figures. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, South (Mr. Maude) quoted them.
The fact is that at the last convenient date, which is 1st April, 1951, the rateable value of the County of Middlesex was some £22,500,000. The rateable value of Ealing is just under £2 million. In other words, we have this dreadful situation: here is this unfortunate county council with this miserable figure of £22 million rateable value and here is this dreadful local authority coming along and proposing to take away this enormous slice of £2 million out of the rateable value. The argument is absurd; I suggest that it does not hold water at all.
As we have been told, apart from London, Middlesex has the largest population and the largest rateable value of any county. Even if we gave Ealing county borough status, and substracted it from Middlesex, the county would still have


the largest population and the largest rateable value of any other county in this country except the county of London.
This is not the sort of case that we had in the last Parliament, in the Luton Bill and the Ilford Bill, for example, to which reference has been made tonight. Undoubtedly there was in those cases a strong argument for the opponents to the Bill who could say, "If you let this town be taken away from the county, you are taking the major part of our rateable value, and what will the remainder of the county do?"

Squadron Leader Cooper: indicated dissent.

Mr. Hay: My hon. and gallant Friend suggests that that was not true in the case of Ilford; it may not have been possible to put it quite so high as that, but at least that was the argument advanced in the case of Luton—that we should be taking away the major town in the county and that the rest would be in a very much worse position as a consquence, and that the other ratepayers would suffer enormously. But in any event, I do not think the argument applies in this case, because, as I have indicated from the figures, it does not appear that Middlesex County Council will really suffer, or that the ratepayers of Middlesex as a whole will suffer, if Ealing is allowed to leave the county in this way. I think the Middlesex County Council would quite easily carry on, wave goodbye and say, "Wayward sister, depart in peace."
There is another argument. It is said that if we agree to the Second Reading of the Bill, we shall prejudge the whole local government issue. It is said that sooner or later some Government will make an announcement about local government reform in this country and that until that time nothing should be done to disturb this frozen pattern of local government. That is not progressive.
I have no doubt that it will be some time before the Government have an opportunity, or the Parliamentary time, to introduce a Measure of comprehensive local government reform. The last Government had six years, and they did not do it. They had many urgent and important

portant problems to deal with, and so have we. I feel that it would be a very bad and retrograde step for us to stand pat, where we are, without making any adjustments to the great machine of local government in the country. It is very unlikely that we shall have an early opportunity of re-organising the machine, and I feel that these interim adjustments are necessary.
"But then," say the critics of the Bill, "even if we grant all that, you are prejudging the issue by allowing this one borough to achieve county borough status." I do not think that is the case with Ealing. I do not think that we prejudge the whole general question as to which boroughs should be allowed county borough status, if indeed county borough status is to be the ultimate solution.
This is a special case, I suggest, and I do feel that the case has peen made out overwhelmingly by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, South, and by the facts themselves as admitted in the various statements made by those who have petitioned against the Bill and those who have put it forward. I do feel that, particularly on this side of the House—I am not introducing a party point here—but on this side of the House we have a great and strong belief that local government should be local.

Mr. Messer: Hear, hear.

Mr. Hay: I know that hon. Members on the other side of the House feel very much the same about it. I would say as a final plea that Ealing here is asking for nothing more nor less than that. Ealing believes she knows best how to run her own affairs. There may be some difficulties about technicalities—difficulties such as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Southall mentioned over health officers, education, and things like that; but they are merely technicalities. The basic issue of principle the House has to decide is, whether or not we are going to permit, in these special circumstances, the case for this particular local authority to be examined by an expert Committee of this House. I suggest that the case for that is made out, and I hope that hon. Members will give the Bill a Second Reading.

8.31 p.m.

Mr. Ede: Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benson) I am concerned with Ealing when we are discussing a Bill promoted by the Ealing Corporation. I do ask hon. Members to realise that we are being asked to deal with a particular Bill dealing with a particular non-county borough situated in a particular county, and that the votes we give tonight, no matter how much we allow them to be swayed by our general view of this matter of county and county district government, will determine, to some extent, the future of Ealing, and, as far as our vote goes, no other district, and will, interfere, possibly, with the county of Middlesex, but with no other county. Therefore, we must give consideration to the special position of Ealing, no matter what our views may be on the general point.
Last week I voted for the West Hartlepool Bill—to the great annoyance of my hon. Friend the Member for Durham, North-West (Mr. Murray)—because it seemed to me that that was a Bill that ought to be examined upstairs. I was prepared to accept one proposition in it, but found great difficulty in dealing with the other proposition in it. What I was quite certain ought to happen was that Hartlepool ought to be allowed to reabsorb West Hartlepool—although that was not the way it was put in the Bill—because there is no doubt that those two local government areas form one community, and one moves from one to the other without knowing one has gone unless there happens to be on a street nameplate an indication whether one is in Hartlepool or West Hartlepool. When it came to the possible absorption into the county borough of part of the Stockton rural district I was not quite sure whether it ought to take place at all, or whether, if it did take place, the area asked for was the right area.
This kind of thing is the sort of thing that can be settled by a Committee upstairs. As far as I am concerned, if five of our colleagues—I think five serve on these Select Committees upstairs—having heard the case put up by the West Hartlepool Town Council and the Durham County Council and by the Stockton Rural District Council, reach a decision, after having heard, let us

remember, learned counsel, and evidence given on oath—which we never get here.
I recollect that when I once presided at a petty sessions a lady took the oath with the words, "The evidence I shall give should be the truth" and that I had to ask her to read the words on the card. Undoubtedly, statements made in the House should be the truth; and I should get into trouble with you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, if I asserted that any statement other than the truth was ever made by any Member of the present House. But the House has a long history.
However, if the Select Committee upstairs decides this question of how much of Stockton rural district should go into West Hartlepool, I imagine that those of us who do not serve on the Committee will say that our colleagues upstairs, having heard counsel, and evidence on oath, and having deliberated—and at least a high proportion of that small Select Committee has had considerable experience of dealing with this kind of legislation—were capable of making that decision, and that we should accept it.
I do not put this Bill into the same category. I put it into a very different category. I had a great deal of sympathy with Luton. In fact, the hon. Member for Luton (Dr. Hill), who was not then so exalted as he now is, was very kind in not quoting to me what I said in one of the Committees upstairs on the Police Act, when the case of Luton was put to me, and when I said that I wished that I could have as good a chance in the Derby as Luton had of becoming a county borough. As the case turned out, I did better on the Derby than Luton did with its county borough status.
Luton, after all, is an area which is surrounded by a very wide rural belt. One has no doubt when one is in Luton, and one has no doubt when one comes out of Luton to get into Bedford. That is not so with Ealing. Ealing is surrounded, as has been pointed out, by 10 other very popular districts. I think it was Lancelot Hogben in his "Mathematics for the Million" who said that if one had five colours on a map one could distinguish all of the areas adjacent. Middlesex is not a bit like that, to take Ealing out of the county is to do something which is very different from taking Luton out of Bedford or Chesterfield out of Derbyshire or Swindon out of Wiltshire. I give three cases at


random where there is a non county borough sufficiently distinguished from the surrounding countryside to be an obvious, recognisable community.
I do not think that Ealing comes into that category. I am certain of this, that the local government of Middlesex, the local government of suburban Essex—by that I mean Ilford, Walthamstow, Romford, Leyton, Leytonstone, and that group of non county boroughs—

Sir Geoffrey Hutchinson: There are East Ham and West Ham.

Mr. Ede: West Ham and East Ham are existing county boroughs. I was talking about suburban Essex, and I am quite sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman, who represents suburban Essex, would not like it to be thought that West Ham is really part of suburban Essex.

Sir G. Hutchinson: I was reminding the right hon. Gentleman of the existence of East Ham as well.

Mr. Ede: If we only go a little further west from West Ham we get into Stepney and Poplar. I was talking about suburban Essex, which is a very similar case to that of Middlesex.
I do not believe—and here perhaps I may relieve some of the anxieties of the Minister, the right hon. Member for Bromley (Mr. H. Macmillan)—that quite the same considerations apply to suburban Kent and suburban Surrey. They have not quite reached the stage of mass development that has taken place in Middlesex and in suburban Essex. I think that those two districts present a problem which is not to be found—and, after all, I have given some little time to local government myself, and have served in two offices in which local government cropped up frequently—anywhere else in the country; there is not the same problem to the organisers of local government as in those two areas, and I do not think they are matters which can be dealt with piecemeal.
I say quite frankly that I think they are urgent. It was a matter of great regret to me personally that in the six years that I was in office we were unable to deal with this matter, and I am quite prepared to accept any scoffs that are made—although they have not been made yet, and may not be—because we did not deal with it. I am trying tonight to deal

with this Bill as objectively as I possibly can.
I am certain that any commission which may be appointed to deal with the local government of England and Wales as a whole will either have to have specific terms of reference with regard to these two suburban districts or will have them excluded from its terms of reference and a separate commission will be appointed to deal with them, for they do not fall into the general consideration that can be given to the rest of the country.
This will be a free vote as far as this side of the House is concerned. There was a complaint last night that a three-line Whip had been issued to hon. Members opposite, and I assured the hon. Gentleman who made the complaint that I had no desire that he should have a three-line Whip inflicted on him. I imagine this is a free vote on both sides of the House, and I hope that on these Bills we give our votes in accordance with the way the weight of the argument appeals to us. I merely say that, in contradistinction to the vote I gave last week I propose on this occasion to go into the Lobby against this Bill for the reasons I have given.
Perhaps I may just be allowed to say one or two words about the general issues that arise. Here I speak for myself alone and cannot be taken as binding anyone other than myself. My own view is that we shall never get a sound review of local government until this House settles what are county and what are county district functions. That has never been done, with the consequence that some very small ancient non-county boroughs have powers with which no small authority ought to be invested. If we could only get set out—and this is a matter for the House and not for a Royal Commission—what is a county and what is a county district function, then I think we could ask a Royal Commission to map England and Wales into new counties and county boroughs on the basis of that decision.
Then, when one went into a county district area one would know the functions that the county district council discharged, and not find that one was in some ancient borough, which, because it had a population of 10,000 in the early days of the 19th century, now had powers which are not vested in populous non-county boroughs like Chesterfield or Luton because they have grown up since


the days when this power was given to the very old corporations. That is the first step, to settle the functions.
Then let us have a Royal Commission to settle what the new counties and the new county boroughs should be. Then take a third step and have in each of the new counties one of the commissioners sitting with local assessors to divide the new county in county districts. As one who took part in the dividing of a county into county districts under the 1929 Act for the review of districts, I think it is astonishing how much log-rolling there is between county councillors, who say "If I vote for your county district to remain exactly as it is, will you vote for my county district also not to be interfered with, no matter how strong the argument in the case may be?" Let me reiterate that I am not speaking for anyone other than myself.
I should have thought, contrary to the view generally held, that in a House in which the Members are fairly evenly divided, one of the things we might do would be to have a Select Committee of the House—this is my personal suggestion and must not be taken to bind anyone else—which might very well consider the first of these three stages. This Committee, being a Select Committee, would be almost evenly divided between the parties for a start. This is a matter which cuts across party lines, and it would be astonishing to find in the official report of such a Select Committee how the divisions had taken place and how the official decision had been supported. We might get on with that stage so that we could have a rational development of this system.
Because I think Middlesex and suburban Essex present so urgent a problem, I hope that something might be done, even during the course of this Parliament, to see whether we cannot get an arrangement by which a new method of solving their problems could be discovered. I am certain that these big urban populations, where they are closely congregated together, need urgent attention.
The greatest man that my native county ever produced, and a former Member of this House, William Cobbett, said, of Middlesex, "All Middlesex is ugly." I have travelled about modern

Middlesex and found that part of the work of the Middlesex County Council has been to preserve a great many beauties that Cobbett never discovered, but I am quite certain that the local government map of Middlesex is the ugliest and the most difficult of all the local government maps of England.

8.50 p.m.

Sir Geoffrey Hutchinson: This is, I think, the third or fourth occasion on which this House has had to consider a Bill of this character. Tonight I should like to make one or two general observations upon the subject matter of the Bill, and I will endeavour not to allow myself to be unduly influenced by the fact that I hope that before long I may be in the same situation as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, South (Mr. Maude) in moving another Bill for county borough powers for my own Borough of Ilford.
I listened, as I am sure the whole House listened, with particular interest to the speech that has just been made by the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede). When he began his speech, I hoped that I should be able to agree with all that he was to say. Up to a point I have been able to agree with much of what the right hon. Gentleman said, particularly with his observations at the conclusion of his speech. But the right hon. Gentleman, I feel, did not do himself justice in explaining to the House why he is going to vote against this Bill. He began by saying that the House has to consider in this Bill the particular situation of Ealing and the particular situation of Middlesex. This Bill has certainly shown that there is a wide difference of opinion about the consequences on Middlesex of creating a new county borough there.
I should have thought, speaking for myself, that that was not a question with which this House ought to deal upon a Second Reading debate. It is, I would suggest to the House, a more fitting subject for the decision of a Committee upstairs which will have the advantage, as the right hon. Gentleman reminded us, of hearing evidence given in a certain way, both of representatives of the parties concerned and of those experts whose assistance is usually invoked on an occasion of this sort. It is very desirable that evidence of that sort should be available to those who have to make a final


determination upon the merits or otherwise of the Bill. The Committee upstairs is in possession of knowledge of all these particular matters upon which a proper decision on this question ought to rest. It is in possession of the facts to an extent and in a manner which this House on the Second Reading of the Bill can never be.
I think that it was the hon. Member for Southall (Mr. Pargiter) who said that the Committee upstairs would have to disregard the effect of this Bill on the County of Middlesex. I should have thought that was precisely one of the matters which the Committee would have to consider. I hope that the House will give this Bill a Second Reading. Let it go upstairs, as I invited the House to allow the Ilford Bill to go upstairs, where it can be decided on its merits, and where the Middlesex County Council will have abundant opportunity, with the assistance of their advisers, of placing before the Committee all the reasons why the Bill should be rejected which they cannot place before this House in a Second Reading debate.
If the House will bear with me, I should like to make one or two observations of a more general character. The right hon. Gentleman said that he drew a distinction between a local authority situated like the Borough of Luton and the position which exists in suburban Essex and in Middlesex. I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman this question: What future does he envisage for these great new authorities which have come into being in Greater London in the last 30 years?
I submit that by allowing places of the size of Ealing, Ilford and similar communities to remain in an administrative county, a more serious disruption of local administration will eventually be caused than will be brought about if greater responsibility is given to these authorities now. Some greater measure of responsibility must eventually be given to places of this size and character than they enjoy at present.

Mr. Ede: In reply to the hon. and learned Gentleman's question about what future I envisage for these places, I think they should be made into urban authorities. But as they are one continuous mass, the two groups which I chose should be considered individually and as a whole,

and the exact boundaries between them, or the possibility of having one authority to deal with the whole of them, with delegated powers to smaller units, would be matters upon which I should like to get the advice of an expert committee sitting to consider them.

Sir G. Hutchinson: I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving me an answer to my question. Needless to say, the answer does not satisfy me.

Mr. Ede: I did not suppose that it would.

Sir G. Hutchinson: The difficulty about the right hon. Gentleman's solution may be found in the fact that these communities are already separate communities.

Mr. Ede: indicated dissent.

Sir G. Hutchinson: The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head. Apparently he and I will not agree about that. If he will come with me one day to the borough I represent, I will endeavour to satisfy him that Ilford, in the 26 years that it has existed, has become a separate community with a municipal life and a civic pride of its own. That is something which is worth having, and I hope that the House will not wish to do anything which is likely to destroy it.
The question I really wanted to put to the right hon. Gentleman was: Does he envisage that these great authorities will receive more responsibility under the reorganisation of local government, or less responsibility? His answer may be that he envisages that they will be reorganised altogether, but, if we exclude that, are we to consider that places of the size of Ealing are to be given more responsibility when reorganisation comes or less?
I think that we cannot escape the conclusion that they will be given a wider responsibility than they possess now. If that is the answer, I say that there will be a much greater disruption of the administration of local government if they are retained within an administrative county now than would be the case if they are offered now a greater measure of independence than they enjoy at present.
Take the education service. In Middlesex, Essex, and the other counties


which contain large suburban local authorities, the administration of education is gradually being built up on the basis that the county is the education authority. In any reorganisation of local government, education is one of the services which will have to go back to those great new county districts. If that is so, is it not better that, before the administration has been built up on a county basis, it should be encouraged now to grow up on the basis of the administration of the large county districts?
What I have said about education I believe to be true of the personal health services and of town planning. I would remind the House that the Boundary Commissioners recommended in their Report that those three services should be transferred from county administration to the administration of a county district authority, to which they gave a new name and a new status.
One or two hon. Members have opposed the Bill upon the ground that Ealing is part of Greater London. Indeed, I think that the argument of the right hon. Gentleman proceeded along those lines. I hope that that argument will not be accepted by the House. There are very good reasons why we should not be unduly influenced by the fact that Ealing forms part of Greater London.
The first reason is that the municipal boroughs in Greater London have, in a very short time, built up an enviable tradition of local administration—I do not think that anyone in any part of the House would challenge that statement—and a municipal patriotism which is a very valuable thing and a quality which this House should do its best to encourage. The mere fact that these Bills are brought forward year after year is some evidence of the existence of that civic pride which this House should make it its purpose to encourage. Local patriotism is a good thing. Let us do what we can to encourage it.
The administration of these boroughs attracts the greatest measure of public interest. I will undertake to say that the local elections which are to take place in Ealing in the next few weeks will arouse a greater measure of interest among the population than the elections which will take place there for the Middlesex County Council.
The government of London in my judgment is not capable of any comprehensive treatment. There are deep-seated differences between local government in the administrative county and local government outside the administrative county. They are differences which cannot be conveniently assimilated. What the form of administration should be in London we cannot discuss on this Bill. The fact that places like Ealing at present form part of the great conurbation of London ought not to be an argument against the existence of all-purpose authorities in the Metropolitan area.
For these reasons, I hope this Bill will receive a Second Reading tonight.

9.6 p.m.

The Minister of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Harold Macmillan): This debate has been, for me at any rate, an interesting one, and has formed a rather agreeable interlude in that sometimes tedious sequence of purely political partisan debates on which we spend so much of our lives. It has been very well argued on both sides, and the case has been fully and amply deployed.
The arguments in favour of the Second Reading of the Bill are simple, clear and practical, and no one can deny their cogency. They were admirably presented in a speech of quite remarkable skill by the hon. Member for Ealing, South (Mr. Maude). So far as its population is concerned, its size, its record as a local government authority, and the capabilities of its council, I have no doubt that Ealing can establish a strong claim to county borough status.
It is quite true that there has been for a long time a series of barriers against the passage of Bills of this kind, and this was in turn defended, as I think the promoters of the Bill argued, by considerations, some of which do not now apply. Of course, for a time a reason given for delay was the transfer of responsibility to the Boundary Commission. That Commission has now been dissolved, and thus, after the dissolution of that body, the reason given was another one which was also used as a barrier—the prospect that a broad measure of local government reform would shortly be put before Parliament.
I am not putting it in any partisan way when I say that six years have passed


and two administrations, one with a large majority and one with a small one, and no such plan has emerged. How then, would the promoters of the Bill argue, can one continue to resist the claim of Ealing and of boroughs similarly placed? Nor is it certain, so they would urge, that if such a review were completed, the proposals which would follow from it would give to this borough or to others similarly placed, powers and functions very different from those which are now proposed to be given in this Bill?
In other words, they might say, the final result of local government reform would be very much what is proposed in this Bill. Therefore, they would argue, and with a good deal of force, that they had been delayed, partly ingenuously by those who believed that it was possible in the turmoil and confusion and the manifold problems of post-war to introduce a large measure of local government reform, and partly disingenuously by those who used the prospect of such a reform as a convenient instrument to delay action which they disliked on other grounds. That is the argument for the Bill, and I hope that I have summed it up fairly.
On the other side, an equally powerful argument was deployed against it by the mover of the Amendment, the hon. Member for Southall (Mr. Pargiter), and by the seconder, the hon. Member for Wood Green (Mr. Irving), whose speech might serve as a model. This argument is that, quite apart from any question of local government reform, Parliament has long been unwilling, or, at any rate, hesitant, to allow boroughs to opt themselves out of the county, so to speak, if the effect upon the county was likely to be damaging or disastrous. These were the arguments which, quite apart from any question of reform, have many times, as the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) will remember, and for many years, been used in the House.
The transformation from what has hitherto been a county town—that was very often the case—into a county borough and the subsequent effect upon the life of the surrounding community, has often been the compelling reason—I can remember one instance a few years ago—why county borough status has been refused by the House. Moreover, in this case, so the argument now runs, if the Bill were to pass, it would be very

difficult—indeed, impossible—to resist similar claims from the neighbours of the borough in question.
Anyone who studies the map will see the cogency of that argument. Boroughs A, B, C, D, E and F would all present precisely the same claim, and the result upon the County of Middlesex would not only be damaging; it would be fateful. In fact, for all except sewerage and, more important, cricketing purposes, the County of Middlesex would cease to exist.
The opponents could go on to argue that it would be difficult to refuse other claims in counties where the blow might not be so mortal. But then, they could even urge that the extinction that would fall upon Middlesex would, perhaps, be a less painful operation than the draining away of its lifeblood that might come to counties like Cambridge or Bedford, just as sudden death may often be preferable to a long drawn out illness. Finally, the opponents repeat the argument that however long the process of reform may take, and however great the difficulties and even the hardships caused by waiting for it, there must ultimately be a large-scale revision of the whole structure of local government.
Why, then, it is argued, take this premature action? Why introduce new and unnecessary difficulties, and why do so—although this argument has not been deployed tonight, it has certainly been present in my mind—at this present time, when it is believed that negotiations are taking place, and not altogether without prospect of success, between the various groups of local authority interests with a view to reaching some agreed solution?
That more or less represents fairly the arguments which have been put forward by both sides, and now the House will expect me to sum up my own judgment in which direction the scale should incline. In a sense, I shall have to disappoint hon. Members, for I think that I should better serve the House if I were to give some information more of a factual character, which may or may not affect its judgment.
In the first place, I do not think it is quite the fact that if the Second Reading of the Bill is passed, it would be the duty of the Private Bill Committee to do anything


except to hear arguments about the effect upon Ealing and upon Middlesex. It would be quite improper for them, as far as I know the rules and procedure of the House of Commons, to enter into a lot of evidence as to what would happen in other boroughs, like Harrow, Hendon, and all the rest of them, or what action they might or might not take. I think that they would be carrying out their functions only if they stuck to what the Bill was about and what would be the effect upon Ealing and Middlesex. I only try to give that advice objectively to the House, because I do not think we can, as it were—if I may use a colloquialism—"pass the buck" to the Committee. We must decide on the Second Reading whether we want this done now or not.
That is on the principle of the Bill, and the other question is about local government reform. There will be no local government reform in this year's legislative programme.

Mr. Ede: What a surprise.

Mr. Macmillan: I am bound to believe that unless there is a substantial measure of agreement between the interests—which is not impossible—I do not see any prospect of introducing it in 1953.

Mr. Ivor Owen Thomas: Would the right hon. Gentleman give some indication of what he means by some measure of agreement between the authorities concerned? Something in the nature of an agreed revision of existing powers?

Mr. Macmillan: I was going to take up the very helpful hint of the right hon. Gentleman, the growth of some general principles as to what the functions and powers of different authorities should be, and I think that will help a lot. Even so, there are many other Measures with which we have to deal, and I do not hold out very great hopes, but I should like very much and I hope very much to present some such Measure in the course of this Parliament. From my own point of view, naturally, it would be an ambition anyone might reasonably feel he had some contribution to make. I therefore hope it, but cannot promise it.
I do not think the public always realise the narrow scope of legislation in this

House, especially when Governments exist with small majorities and where highly contentious legislation can hardly be taken except on the Floor of the House of Commons. Even non-contentious legislation can take almost as much time, sometimes more. If, therefore, the argument as to the imminence of local government reform were regarded by hon. Members as a vital factor in coming to a decision, I think I ought to be frank with them. It is in our hope, it is in our ambition, but I cannot promise that we shall be in a position to fulfil it. I think that is a frank statement.
Having said that, I add that I think the vote will be, in the strictest sense of the word, a free vote. I do not myself approve of that intermediate system in which a vote is called a free vote and in which I have known Ministers to use a good many private and informal methods of influencing hon. Members and the Whips to use their functions not officially but effectively. This House should decide, after hearing the argument, and I should not regard any vote given for or against the Bill as being for or against the Government just as the right hon. Gentleman claimed he was in the same position regarding his party.
As a personal view, I represent a non-county borough and I have represented a non-county borough during the whole of my political life of more than 25 years, first that of Stockton and now that of Bromley. I am very well acquainted with the grievances as well as the ambitions—well stated tonight—which very often such municipal corporations have. At the same time, I am well aware of the doubts and apprehensions of the county councils and I realise the difficulties of this particular case. Yet, if this Bill is passed, I cannot really pretend that a large number of other Bills will not very rapidly follow.
I am afraid then that the position might become untenable and a kind of bastard reform of the whole structure might be forced upon us piecemeal, perhaps under unsuitable conditions. For, let us face it, many difficulties may lie before our country, when our minds will not perhaps be ready to give grave attention to these matters, and with the proper preparation.
The right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), and I am grateful to


him, made certain suggestions which I will study carefully, both for what he said and for his experience and for the way they were put forward. I think that large reforms, or large measures, or large issues should rest on the strength of Governmental decisions and should be carried out as part of a general plan. Therefore, I should be sorry to see a kind of slide into a confused position, if there is any chance still of carrying out a well thought out and careful advance. For these reasons, I shall cast my vote in this Division against the Second Reading of this Bill.

9.21 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Messer: Everyone who has sat through this debate will agree that it has been worth while. I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing, South (Mr. Maude) on having stated a difficult case in a convincing manner. If he left out things he might have said, he left them out because they would have damaged that case. None the less, he made the best of the material he had. Although a humble back bencher, I feel I can extend to the Minister my appreciation of the statesmanlike manner in which he submitted to the House what is, in effect, the true position.
I could not reconcile the speech of the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Hay). I always enjoy his speeches. He has a nice speaking voice. He has a clarity of enunciation which leaves no room for ambiguity. I did not hear quite so clearly all that the hon. and learned Member for Ilford, North (Sir G. Hutchinson) said. But in the speech of the hon. Member for Henley there were certain references which I found it difficult to reconcile. He said that if this Bill goes upstairs to a Committee, it does not prejudice the question of the other boroughs. Of course, he meant us to learn from that that Ealing could get county borough status without there being any danger of other boroughs following that line. Then, in a remarkable sentence, he later said that if Middlesex as a county council went out of existence, what did it matter?
Those of us who know our London hate its terrible urban spread. If it has done nothing else to justify remaining in existence, the Middlesex County Council has created a wonderful green belt

which has prevented that urban spread getting right out of hand. The hon. Member said we might leave the county council with nothing but sewerage powers. Well, I was in the House in 1929 when a Bill was introduced by the county council which was responsible for the finest engineering works in Europe, the Mogden sewerage works, the West Middlesex drainage scheme. If hon Members care to go there they will find illumination by the gas made on the spot, methane gas. They will find motor vehicles with no other motive power than that generated on the spot by methane gas. That could never have been done by any county borough.
What I am trying to stress is that if this Bill goes upstairs, and if it succeeds, it is bound to be followed by no fewer than 11 other boroughs and urban districts asking for similar treatment. If it succeeds, we could not deny them the right of becoming county boroughs also. In other words, we shall be destroying the two-tier system.
I felt tonight that this debate was being conducted on the lines of the prejudice of those who support the all-purpose authority and those who support the county authority. I do not support either of those authorities. I have said for years, and I believe it, that we must have reform of local government. The position is really chaotic, and I think we can start in Middlesex.
The county council has agreed, and not under the threat of this Bill—it has been in the air for a long time—to hold a conference with all the local authorities and, at that conference, to reach agreement on what the minor authorities should do. I confess that authorities like Ealing, Harrow, Willesden, Edmonton, Tottenham and Hendon can quite easily do more than they are doing and are entrusted to do at the present time. They all ought to have more power. But that does not mean that by giving county borough status to a few of them we accomplish all that is required.
We cannot escape the fact that there must be one authority big enough to plan for a wide area. There must be an authority big enough, when a population is divided up into its special categories and types, to deal with those special categories and types. Then the day-to-day


administration of the service should devolve on the smaller authorities.
If there is no system of that description, then there can be no over-all planning authority, no big authority to deal with the mechanistic side of the social services. We ought to have agreement as to what these important authorities can do very much better than the county authorities.
But it is not merely a mechanical efficiency that is required. When we are dealing with these personal social services something more than mere cleverness is wanted. There are those qualities which are associated only with those who are, as it were, at the point of contact with the people. Therefore, the responsibility to carry out what can be described as the human services—health, maternity, welfare, and all those sort of things—should rest on the shoulders of those authorities.
But it is not likely that we are to get any reform of local government in a comprehensive way, and, when we do, we shall have to consider a county like Middlesex as something exceptional. There is not another county in the country like it. It is completely urbanised, and is the only county which is completely within the Metropolitan Police area.
London already has special powers and a special Act of Parliament, which, in point of fact, proves very definitely that there is need for review. I do not like the London system; it is over-centralised. That is not the system I am looking at for Middlesex. I want something better than that because, I repeat. Middlesex is unique.
I want to touch upon one or two things contained in this Bill. Perhaps I ought to refer to the claim that has been made so often in debates of this kind. It is, "Let the House of Commons give the Bill a Second Reading and send it upstairs. We only want to consider this in principle and the Committee, who will go into detail, will be the body that will best judge whether or not this matter should proceed."
But Second Reading is something more than consideration of a principle. We have a right, on Second Reading, to consider the content of a Bill. I listened to the hon. Member for Ealing, South, when he was saying what a wonderfully

efficient borough Ealing is: but I am not so sure. For instance, Ealing was responsible in 1950 for building 79 houses. In 1951 the figure went up to 111—the lowest figure in the whole county. Acton, which has a population of only 68,000, built 224 houses. Staines, with a population of 21,000, built 500 houses.
Let us look at the possibility of improvement in the services if Ealing becomes a county borough. The present technical school there does not provide training in engineering and, therefore, their engineering students would have to go outside the county borough to receive technical education of that character. If we take the county there are technical schools to which Ealing children can go. There is in Hornsey one of the finest art schools. At present students from Ealing can go to that school.
Ealing children can now go to Southall and to other boroughs, for secondary schools, technical schools, grammar schools and, of course, county schools are open to the population of any part of the county. By becoming a county borough Ealing will lessen the opportunity of their children receiving as good an education as they can receive at present. It was not for nothing that in 1944 the Education Act provided for this system whereby the county is the education authority.
I am prepared to agree that there are possibilities of there being modifications in the working of that Act, which could improve it and could give to municipalities greater authority than they have at present. But that is not justified by Ealing in any way at all. There has been no case made out for Ealing having borough status without it being shown that it is bound to do damage to certain other boroughs.
I would refer to the fact that Middlesex has a rateable value of £22 million and Ealing has a rateable value of over £1,900,000. Those figures are not important. What is important is that if we truncate the county and, in consequence, weaken its opportunity to do the work that it can do, we shall be doing harm to local government generally.
I hope that this Bill will not go upstairs. I hope that we shall benefit from this debate by persuading the Government to set up a committee to investigate and inquire into the prospects


of changes in local government so that, if we cannot get what some of us have been hoping for for years—a major measure of reform—at least we can get such alterations as will deal with the anomalies which, at the present time, mean that we do not get the best either out of the people who are prepared to serve or those who are served.

9.37 p.m.

Squadron Leader A. E. Cooper: I am very conscious of the special responsibility which devolves upon me tonight in winding up the case for the Ealing Corporation—a borough which is similar in many respects to the borough I represent in this House. I always listen with very great interest, and indeed pleasure, to the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Messer) on the subject of local government; but I am afraid that I have listened now for three years in a row to virtually the same speech dealing with the same problem.
In the last two years he was a Member of the party in power. There are many hon. Members on the opposite side of the House who have expressed very considerable feelings in regard to local government, but over the years they appear to have had no influence whatsoever on their right hon. Friends when they were able to do something about local government reform.
I want to make one point in answer to the hon. Member for Tottenham on the subject of Ealing's housing abilities. I think I must correct his statement straight away. He quoted some figures which would appear to indicate that Ealing was a very backward housing authority. In point of fact, up to 31st December, 1951, Ealing Corporation had been responsible for the erection of no fewer than 2,279 houses. [HON. MEMBERS: "Since when?"] Since the end of the war. At one period they were top of the Minister of Health's housing league table for houses built by non-county boroughs since the end of the war. At present they maintain a position second on the list, and I must tell the hon. Member for Tottenham that the non-county borough which is now on top is the borough represented by my hon. and learned Friend and myself, namely, Ilford. Both Ilford and Ealing have Conservative councils, which would

appear to indicate that, notwithstanding the great difficulties under which we labour, we have been able to build houses rather more quickly than Socialist-dominated councils.

Mr. Messer: The hon. Gentleman says I have misquoted, and to prove that I have misquoted he says that my figure of 111 houses for 1951 is wrong because Ealing has built 2,000 houses since the end of the war. Will he tell me how many houses Ealing have built in 1951?

Squadron Leader Cooper: I did not say the hon. Member had misquoted, I said that he had misled the House, and I repeat that. On another occasion, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that one cannot get away from arithmetic, and the facts are that since the end of the war no fewer than 2,279 houses have been built by the Ealing Corporation. That is not important, however; nor is it relevant to the issue before us.
Hon. Members on all sides of the House, not only tonight but on other occasions, have expressed a desire for the reform of local government. This unanimity of desire has found expression through three Parliaments. What prevents us from taking the necessary steps? In the past, the narrowness of Government majorities has been the determining factor. Nevertheless, when one listens to speeches from both sides of the House, one sees a surprising degree of unanimity which, I think, would find a majority in the House for a major reform.
What we have to fight against is the insistent and persistent desire of the county councils to retain their powers, which they have obtained over a number of years. It is not often that I agree with the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan), but on one occasion he said something with which I found myself in complete agreement. He said that the local interest must be preserved in local government—and I quote from the OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd November, 1949, col. 517:
There are some things to which that test is not entirely applicable. The citizens of any of our great communities require an emotional identification with something which is smaller and more immediate than that of the nation itself. Local government is a part of the emotional, spiritual and aesthetic equipment of modern society, and, therefore, it is something to which we cannot only apply the


test of efficiency, because if we apply that test to the ends of life as well as to the means of life, then we have a soulless and stereotyped community."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd November, 1949; Vol. 469, c. 517.]
When I read that I thought it was the classic answer to Socialism in our time.
For years the struggle has gone on between county districts and county councils. I say quite frankly, in order to make my position quite clear, that I am strongly opposed to the entrenched position of the county councils in this country. I believe that experience shows, irrespective of the party which controls them at any one time, that they are inefficient in the way they administer the affairs of our country. [HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."] Immediately we see county Members eager to defend this entrenched position, and I do not blame them for that at all. We must remember that counties generally are a mixture of both urban and rural over their large areas, and the local part of administration is no longer there.
It is quite wrong to say that we cannot reform local government at present. As was pointed out by the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benson), in fact there has been a very considerable reformation of local government since 1945, and very substantial functions and powers have been taken away from the smaller authorities and given to the larger authorities. Was there ever a voice raised in the House by any Member of a county division protesting against these new powers being given to the counties? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] Well, if there were such voices I must say they were rather sotto voce.

Mr. John Paton: The hon. and gallant Gentleman was not here.

Squadron Leader Cooper: It may be that I have but just come to this House, but I have been able to read for a long time. I am not convinced that there is any real desire on the part of the county councils to have any major reform of local government. Indeed, if we quote from the petition of the Middlesex County Council against the Bill, we see in paragraph 6:
In the opinion of the County Council there is no necessity to make any change in the local government of Middlesex.

The Council goes on:
Manifestly, if a change is proposed, the subject must be dealt with as a whole.
I should like hon. Gentlemen to read very carefully through this petition and the petitions which have been submitted in other cases—by Essex County Council when Ilford put forward its Bill, and by Bedfordshire County Council when Luton put forward its Bill. Perhaps not unnaturally, the case is always weighted in favour of the county council. There is always talk about the harm—or the alleged harm—that will be done to the county council. There is never any suggestion of the benefits that will accrue to the local authority which is seeking to acquire an improvement in its status. That, surely, is a not inconsiderable point to bear in mind in these cases.
It has been proved over and over again that, by the granting of county borough status to those boroughs that apply, for it, and can prove that they can provide service in a more efficient manner than they have been doing, something of great benefit to the future social life of our country is done.
We seek tonight to infuse new life and virility into our local government service, to give the aldermen and councillors of this very large and progressive borough a new sense of mission and greater responsibility, to provide for the local ratepayers greater and closer control over their own affairs. I have said on previous occasions, and when supporting the Ilford Corporation Bill, that local government is both the foundation and the pillar of our democratic way of life; and to allow local power to diminish can only strike at the very roots of our society. Tonight the House has a real chance to rebuild this service.
I wish to quote again the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ebbw Vale. It has been suggested time and time again that something is being done which should not be done—that we are trying to jump the queue, to get in front of any reform of local government which may ultimately take place. I should like to point out that when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ebbw Vale had some responsibility for the affairs of this country he made a statement in this House in which he announced the winding-up of the Boundary Commission, and, when he was pressed by a former


Member for Luton on what was the position of local authorities, and on how they were to secure some improvement in their status, he said:
Local authorities themselves should decide whether to proceed with Private Bill legislation. Where local authorities think they ought to have immediate easement, I think they ought to proceed by Private Bill procedure at once, and, where easement is necessary, we will give facilities."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th June, 1949; Vol. 466, c. 761.]
The next thing was that some four months later the right hon. Gentleman came down to the House and made another statement which was completely at variance with the one he had previously made in the House.

Mr. Messer: Which one will the hon. and gallant Gentleman accept?

Squadron Leader Cooper: If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me a little I will tell him. The right hon. Gentleman said on 2nd November, 1949:
But we are not prepared to support proposals which are so far-reaching in their character as to make changes that might obviously have to be assimilated in the changes that the Government themselves will propose."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd November, 1949;Vol. 469, c. 517.]

Mr. J. Paton: There is nothing at variance about that.

Squadron Leader Cooper: It was so completely at variance that it had a very extraordinary effect on the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), who on the first occasion supported his right hon. Friend in the Division Lobby, because he felt that his right hon. Friend meant what he said, that there was to be some reform of local Government.

Mr. Paton: rose—

Squadron Leader Cooper: The hon. Gentleman really ought not to interrupt. He has not been present at the debate for very long, which has now lasted nearly three hours.
When the hon. Member for Coventry, East, discovered that his right hon. Friend did not mean there was to be any reform, and that there was no likelihood of it, he expressed his displeasure and went into the Division Lobby in support of the Luton Corporation Bill on the second occasion. Now, of course, the chums have got together again, and I suppose that rift has been healed.
The point is that we have got to a stage in the government of this country where we can no longer dilly-dally with the question of local government reform. We have heard from my right hon. Friend that within the life of this Parliament he hopes to make some proposal for such reform. Hon. Gentlemen opposite have expressed themselves in some sort of amazement about that, but I would remind them that this Parliament does not end until October, 1956, so that my right hon. Friend has got some months of elbow room in which to bring forward these necessary reforms.
I therefore feel that, strong as are the arguments for refusing to give this Bill a Second Reading, on balance the arguments on the other side are equally strong. I think that tonight the House should express itself positively, give this Bill a Second Reading and allow detailed consideration of these proposals. I am sure that that will be of considerable help to my right hon. Friend. I concede that it will not, perhaps, give him the future pattern for local government reform, but by detailed consideration in Committee it should provide information which will determine what functions a new county borough can usefully and properly perform. I therefore ask the House to give this Bill a Second Reading.

Mr. Ian Harvey: Would my hon. and gallant Friend not agree that giving this Bill a Second Reading would make it essential that the highly necessary measure of reform which we all desire should be pressed forward, which would meet the case made by the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Messer) just now?

Squadron Leader Cooper: I think that my hon. Friend is quite right. As I have already said, giving this Bill a Second Reading would, in effect, give a jolt all along the line. It would give the Minister a jolt, and enable him to see that local authorities really wanted something in this way. It would also give the Minister's advisers a jolt. I am quite sure that, if we get a Second Reading, the four main local government organisations will get together more quickly and will produce a degree of harmony which is at present not entirely there.

Captain Soames: No, no, no.

Squadron Leader Cooper: My hon. and gallant Friend says "No, no, no." I would like to know what he means by that.

Captain Soames: I will certainly tell him what I mean by it. If conversations take place or are arranged between the county council and the borough council and these two parties discuss their problems together and then produce something on the Floor of the House, it is far more likely to be of use to both these councils than if this Bill is given a Second Reading and goes upstairs to be discussed in Committee, when it will not come out in nearly so satisfactory a manner.

Squadron Leader Cooper: That was not the point I made at all, or upon which my hon. and gallant Friend made a negative response. I am suggesting that the four local government organisations will be persuaded to get together with greater expedition than they are at present if this Bill receives a Second Reading. I should like to feel assured

that there is this desire on the part of the county councils associations to reach some accord on this matter. As I said earlier, I am not at all convinced that there is this desire on the part of the larger authorities, but we must not forget a very real and urgent desire on the part of the large non-county boroughs to secure an improvement in their status, because they know positively that they can perform the services much more efficiently and in many cases much more economically than is being done at the present time.

Mr. Maude: rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."

Question put accordingly, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

The House divided: Ayes, 94; Noes, 165.

Words added.

Orders of the Day — TEXTILE INDUSTRY

10.8 p.m.

Mr. Sutcliffe: I was saying, when the House passed to other business, that the recession in the textile industry is worldwide, and all the work that has been put in by way of modernising our mills and increasing the efficiency of our industry in recent years has been of no avail to stop it. I want to suggest to the Government one or two ways in which they can be helpful. First of all, as regards Purchase Tax—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must ask hon. Gentlemen below the Bar to pass out of the Chamber quietly.

Mr. Sutcliffe: An alteration in Purchase Tax is essential. The past scheme towards the end was holding up production, because nobody knew on what goods it would in future be placed, but the new scheme will have some unforeseen results. I think they must have been unforeseen. It will hit very severely several classes of the better quality goods which Lanachire has always been able to export and on which she so much depends for success, such as best quality shirts and furnishings. A large number of these were previously in the Utility scheme and were sold free of tax. Now they will pay quite a high rate of tax, and that will be a definite hindrance to their export sales, especially in the American market. That may not have been realised, but it is having a serious result. The leaders of the cotton industry on all sides urge that the Purchase Tax on cotton


and rayon goods shall be abolished altogether. This has been suggested already by hon. Members in all parts of the House, and I urge most earnestly that it should be done.
There will be a further shrinkage of trade if it is not done, and it will be a definite hindrance to the increase of our export trade. That shrinkage will cause the Chancellor further losses in taxation from the lowering of profits in the industry. Also it might cost a great deal in unemployment benefit, so serious is the position. On the other hand, the value of "D", as we call it, could be raised, or the rate of Purchase Tax could be reduced; but neither of those two things will be sufficient to prevent a shrinkage in our export trade.
Another point is the question of Government contracts. We have heard from the President of the Board of Trade that he intends to do all he can in that direction, but there is a rumour in the North that a proportion of Government contracts, said to be 25 per cent., is to be placed with firms in the Development Areas. The cotton industry towns and villages have never been classed as Development Areas, but there are many towns and villages which are entirely dependent on this one industry. If the trade recession goes on, they will be worse hit than the Development Areas, and so I urge the Government to place their orders in Lancashire in adjacent cotton towns, and not to single out the Development Areas for these contracts, which it would be a help if the Government could place as soon as possible.
If one made a criticism of the previous Government, it would be that they placed too many orders for re-armament too quickly, so that they were at the height of the cotton boom and many of the orders had to be placed abroad. That was a pity, because if the orders had been more spaced they would have overlapped this situation and would have been able to fill a gap most usefully by diversion to our own mills. However, it is obviously too late to do very much in that direction.
Local authorities and county councils also can help by placing orders in this country rather than abroad. I mention this because recently the Lancashire County Council sent round to schools in

their area a large quantity of tablecloths. They have ordained that school children in future shall have their meals at tables covered with cloths instead of with American cloth or something of that kind, but to the surprise of many schoolmasters and others in the school, these cloths, which have arrived in lengths of 36 yards, have stamped on them, "Chang Lu Weaving Company, Kowloon, Hong Kong" Undoubtedly, that is a British territory and it is important to maintain trade there, but it is a little unfortunate, to say the least, that these cloths should have arrived in recent weeks, when the position is so very bad and when they will certainly cause a good deal of dissatisfaction.
I want to mention one other matter. It is, perhaps, an unusual point and may not have been raised before. Recently, in some of the weekly and other papers, leading economists have been suggesting that textiles are no longer the first priority in Lancashire, that Lancashire is tending to become an engineering county, and that engineering should take priority. I ask the Government: are textiles still to be the first priority of Lancashire and the West Riding? It would be a tragedy if they were not, but undoubtedly the engineering industry there has increased greatly in recent years and is, of course, playing a vital part in the re-armament drive. Many new firms, especially smaller firms, have started in recent years, but Lancashire is still dependent, and has been built up, upon her textile industry, and I say without hesitation that it should still have first priority there.
To help the industry to maintain this first priority, help is needed by firms who are developing new ideas. There are some firms—perhaps, only one or two—who are developing these new ideas and new products. On their own initiative, they are specialising in certain lines which will play a very useful part in the future. They want support from the Government in dollars and in machinery.
These firms are having difficulty in importing from the United States and from Switzerland certain machinery which is vital to them in this new work, and they ask that the Government should not be so restrictive in considering the imports of this machinery. The Government should use more skill in discriminating between what is absolutely vital


for the future, rather than the present tendency to refuse everything.
Certain types of synthetic materials should come in duty-free. These new products are being made for defence and for the export trade; 75 per cent. of the materials are being used in these two directions. There is laminated board for the insulation of machines, etc.; glass cloth, for which there is a big future, and fabric of various sorts, including fabric which has been used for the insoles of boots which our men are wearing in Korea.
Imports of synthetic yarn, for example, from the United States bear a duty of 35 per cent. This item is not manufactured here, and is not obtainable here. No harm could be done, therefore, by lowering the rate of duty. The duty of 35 per cent. is subject to a drawback of 9d. per lb., but this still leaves a duty of no less than 22 per cent., which goes to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
These yarns are classed as artificial silk, I understand, because nobody knows in what other category to place them. But surely, if they were artificial silk, they should bear some slight resemblance to real silk, which always has been the criterion. Although this synthetic yarn bears no resemblance whatever to artificial silk, it pays the same import duty because it is classified under the 1925 Act, which is still in use by the Customs and Excise, an Act which certainly has amendments but which was originally passed over a quarter of a century ago. I think that Act wants revising and new categories placed in it to bring it up-to-date with modern inventions and modern requirements. There should be a review of the tax on these basic synthetic products for which there will be great use in the future.

Mr. William Ross: Did I understand the hon. Member to say that no synthetic yarn is made in this country?

Mr. Sutcliffe: Not of the nature used in the products of which I am speaking: it is a special plastic yarn.
The Government can help a great deal in these and other directions, which will probably be suggested by other hon. Members. We hope and believe that this is only a temporary recession in trade. The industry, incidentally, is

much smaller than it was; there are 700,000 fewer spindles than in 1950, and it should therefore make a quicker recovery. There is no spirit of defeat in Lancashire, but we do rely on the Government for all the assistance they can provide. The duty of a Government is, surely, not to interfere too much with industry, but to guide and help wherever and whenever it can, especially at a time like this. We, as Members for these areas, look for all the help the Government can give us, and we do not think we shall look in vain.

10.23 p.m.

Mr. Frank McLeavy: When my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) was making his very well balanced opening speech, I thought that the general consensus of opinion on both sides of the House was very much with him in respect of the points of view he was putting before the House. I feel that the speech of the President of the Board of Trade must have been received on both sides with considerable disappointment, because we are all deeply concerned about the growth of unemployment in Lancashire and Yorkshire arising from the difficult circumstances confronting the textile industry.
We must, of necessity, be conscious of the fact that the prosperity of this country has in the past been largely based on the prosperity of the wool and cotton textile industry. If we get a measure of depression in either cotton or wool textile, it will undoubtedly mean poverty and destitution in the homes of the operatives in all parts of the country.
I sometimes think we do not quite appreciate the importance of the problem which is developing. I sometimes wonder whether the present set-up of the Board of Trade is really modern enough to meet the modern requirements of industry, or whether some new organisation which can speedily apply new remedies should be created by consultation on both sides of the House.
Hon. Members representing the City of Bradford have received very serious representations from the industry respecting the development of unemployment. I wish to read a few extracts from a letter I received from one Bradford industrialist who is anxious that the points which be makes shall receive the consideration


both of the President of the Board of Trade and of Parliament itself. I consider it important that in these debates, apart from expressing our own point of view, we should know what the industry is thinking and what remedies they consider ought to be applied in the present situation.
My correspondent is the director of a large textile firm in Bradford. I will give brief extracts from his letter. He writes:
The restriction of trade imposed recently by several countries are in my view much more important than is generally appreciated. The unemployment in this area"—
that is, Bradford—
is only just beginning. I fear it will soon be extremely serious. I cannot emphasise this enough.
I felt that the speech of the President of the Board of Trade this afternoon did not reveal that he felt this matter was likely to be extremely serious in the near future. My correspendent goes on:
My own firm are now only paying 70 per cent. of last December's wages and our shortage of business is only just beginning to be felt.
He then goes on to deal with the various areas where the restriction of trade is seriously affecting the woollen textile industry, and his reference to Australia is as follows:
The reduction of the total importation of wool cloth by four-fifths gives the trade a heavy blow. It also gives the customers in Australia a powerful aid to cancel orders placed at prices over double what they are today. This means enormous losses to manufacturers here or at best, difficulty in holding high-priced goods here for a long period, if ever they are taken up.
Then he refers to Switzerland as a small country, but nevertheless a country which is making its contribution, or was making it, towards helping our textile industry. He says of Switzerland:
A smaller, but still important, hard currency market has put all wool textiles from England on licence for the last four months. Licences are most sparely given.
There, again, is an indication that in countries like Switzerland we are experiencing difficulties today which have not been experienced for many long years.
France, I presume, is an important importer of textiles. My correspondent's comments on France were:
All imports are stopped pending the issue of a quota. I have it on good authority—

and I should like the President of the Board of Trade to note this—
that the French Government are delaying the issue of this quota unless pressure is applied by our authorities and will postpone the issue for a long time.
I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to give us at an early date some encouragement to hope that his Department and the Government are determined to tackle this problem and are getting down to the job, because these difficulties will cause much distress in all the industrial areas of England, and especially in Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire—the areas that laid the foundation of the greatness of our nation and made its prosperity possible.
The President of the Board of Trade should take the matter up with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and with the Government generally and should seek some way by which representations can be made to Australia and other countries who have decided to suspend their orders, and in some cases to cancel them. After all, Australia is part of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and I should have thought that the interests of the British workers in the textile industry were also the interests of the Commonwealth.
The conference of Commonwealth Ministers should have dealt with these problems and should have made sure that whatever restrictions Britain or Australia or any other country in the Commonwealth had to apply because of temporary financial difficulties, they would be applied in such a way as not to strike at the industries of the various countries concerned. I know there are difficulties.
Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cheshire have made it possible by their sheer industry for our nation to rise to influence and power throughout the world, and here in this House we do not appear to be alive to the serious nature of the present situation. We do not appear to be roused tonight by the dangers not only to our financial position but to the happiness and well-being of our people.
I think hon. Members representing constituencies in Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cheshire will agree when I say that we expect the Government to get down to this problem and bring forward a scheme which will prevent the serious dangers to which my correspondent referred. I hope the right hon. Gentle-


man will convey to the Government the general feeling of the House and that something will be done to ensure that we do not go back to the old days of unemployment and destitution.
It is true that during the six years from 1945 we had no unemployment and very little competition. But at least we should see that there are no restrictions which can be removed by negotiation and by representation by the Board of Trade and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
There is a general feeling in industry that the Government have not been bargaining hard enough. Correspondents have sent telegrams to the Bradford Members of Parliament saying that industry feels that the Government have not bargained hard enough in order to prevent Australia, France and the other countries cutting the importation of British textile goods. If that is so, it is a serious indictment upon the Government. I think this is far too serious to make a political point of it. It is a question of concern to both sides of the House whether or not these great industries are going to continue to play their part in the industrial activities of this nation and of the world.
In spite of the growing competition, I think the time has come when the President of the Board of Trade and his colleagues should get down to the problem. It may well be that consultations on both sides of the House, to try to reach some solution of this problem, will do a great service to this nation and to mankind.

10.37 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Hirst: I am very pleased to follow the hon. Member for Bradford, East (Mr. McLeavy), inasmuch as he is the first and I am the second speaker from the back benches on either side of the House whose constituencies are primarily concerned with the wool textile industry. We have heard a great deal today about the problems of the cotton areas, and I do not want to suggest for one moment that their problem is not very grave indeed—graver than that of many of the wool textile areas. It has shot up much more quickly; it has been more sudden and the numbers concerned are infinitely greater.
In the case of the wool textile industry, it has been more gradual. The recession

started almost a year ago. I hope the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle) will bear that in mind when she makes her political points on another occasion. The number of productive operatives in the wool textile trade 18 months ago was of the order of 170,000. In January this year it dropped to 149,000—a drop of over 20,000—and I am quite sure that the present situation is a good deal worse and probably down to the low level of September, 1947, when the industry got going again after the war.
The number of unemployed in the wool textile industry, including the officially recognised return of short-time on 14th January, was over 14,000. It is now most certainly greater. My own constituency of Shipley, which covers Bingley and Baildon, lies adjacent to Bradford and accounts for nearly one-tenth of that amount. If I include Bradford—because it is adjacent and the trade is intermixed, with often one firm with one process in one town and another process in the other—it accounts for 50 per cent. of the unemployment and short-time in the whole wool textile industry.
So I can understand and have great sympathy with the strength of the views expressed by the hon. Member for Bradford, East, although I do not quite agree with some of his peroration. I do not want to be pessimistic—I felt that the very fair speech of the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) was a little pessimistic—so let us hope that in the textile trade we can—I speak for the wool textile trade at the moment—return, for at any rate a fair share of the time, to at least normal demand at home and abroad; if we cannot reach the peaks which we have known in the last two years, at least normal proportions. It would be distressing if we could not meet the demand.
It would disastrous if acute recession yielded to such normal conditions that demand remained substantially unsatisfied because the industry had lost the labour force which it very painfully and painstakingly built up and trained since 1947. In the words of the Wool Textile Bulletin of December,
In this task it will be difficult to succeed twice in so short a time.
I realise that in the national interest there has inevitably to be a fair measure of redeployment of labour to meet the


national emergency, but anything of that nature which may be required has been exceeded in the areas which are predominantly textile.
I most decidedly associate myself with the hon. Member for Rossendale in his reference to the fact that in many textile areas many of the villages consist of one mill or two mills at the most and that the livelihood and happiness of all the people in the village stand or fall by the extent to which the mill or pair of mills can be kept going. There is no question of redeploying those people in some armament factory, at least in nine cases out of 10, and I hope that we shall all bear that in mind.

Mr. Hale: I take it that the hon. Member is talking about redeployment, not in the technical sense, but in the sense of all our people being transferred from the textile industry altogether or for a long period? Does he suggest that that is an involuntary or a planned act?

Mr. Hirst: I am suggesting that it is inevitable that a certain measure of transfer of labour will take place in the national emergency. It will result automatically from the circumstances of the orders and the flow of materials. It has far exceeded anything which is desirable in the textile areas, and we must do all we can not to aggravate a situation which has developed in areas which are predominantly textile and in small communities which are built up on one aspect of an industry.
The textile trade—I think I can fairly speak for all of it here—consists of an independent type of people who do not expect the Government to go out and get orders for them and who are quite prepared to do that for themselves. But the channels must be opened.
I wish to refer hon. Members to one short passage in the annual report of the Bradford Chamber of Commerce, which was approved at the annual meeting yesterday. It says:
Lack of quotas in some markets, refusal of import licences in others, and the unsettled conditions in the Middle East are among the factors that darken the outlook for increased exports, and in this connection the need for more effective bargaining when making trade agreements with countries which limit imports by quotas or other means has been brought to the notice of the President of the Board of Trade by a deputation from the Wool Export

Group. Evidence is available that other countries when making trade agreements contrive to find outlets for their products to the detriment of United Kingdom exporters.
To that extent I again support the hon. Member for Bradford, East. In the old days the only barrier in many instances was the tariffs. Subsequently we got quantitative restrictions at an alarming rate, and in many cases there was total exclusion.
I do not myself think at times that Government bargaining has gained enough. My little experience goes back over many years. For over 12 years I served on the grand council of the F.B.I., and when I served on the particular committee dealing with this subject Presidents of the Board of Trade came and went, Governments changed, yet the same situation seemed to go on. There was a lack of appreciation of the fact that we are a great importing nation—and even with these import cuts of today we still are so—and have a reasonable right to demand some quid pro quo for the markets we give to other people. I think there are occasions when we could drive harder bargains.
I do not want hon. Gentlemen opposite to be sensitive on this point, for I am not making a political speech, nor am I claiming that this has necessarily happened over the past six years, but there have been occasions when the Foreign Office have had too much to say in business matters. I think we could drive better bargains.
I know the difficulties today in Latin America. The fact remains that exports now are roughly between one quarter and one hundredth—and in one case more than one hundredth—of what they were in 1937. What about Germany? I would like some help here from the President of the Board of Trade. Why did we get such a bad deal on the Anglo-German Agreement? What about Greece? Many hon. Gentlemen will remember that country as a traditional market for our textiles. Why can France drive a better bargain than us? Has there been a lack of liaison between the Ministry of Food and the President of the Board of Trade? Why can France insist on her textiles being taken in exchange for currants and raisins?
I do not want to be over-aggressive in this matter, but I do suggest that we are in a position to drive better bargains. I


am advised that this is a sore point with many industrial firms in my part of the country. I naturally regret as much as any hon. Gentleman the unhappy circumstances of Australia. I do not want to cause any embarrassment, and certainly two blacks do not make a white, but I am sure everyone will have a little feeling and understanding of textile operatives in this country either unemployed or in fear of unemployment. They see on the one hand that Australia can cut four-fifths of her imports overnight, and on the other hand that we have negotiated reductions of imports which will continue to flow in to the detriment of the people in the textile mills.
I do not suggest two blacks make a white, but I want the sympathy and understanding of the House of the feeling in the minds of these people who see these imports still coming in and yet another member of the Commonwealth throws the whole thing off. I do not think everyone realises what that means to many firms. They felt they had a gilt-edged market and manufactured their stuff many months ahead of shipment. These orders are now likely to be cancelled, for it is unlikely that the high priced goods will be chosen for the export quota. I feel that these are important matters. I am glad the Member for Bradford East, read that letter from a constituent with mills in both our Parliamentary divisions. I, too, have a copy, and I hope some of the points will be borne in mind by the President of the Board of Trade.
I have now, I think, spoken for long enough, but I would emphasise my hope that we can get a little more hard bargaining. I hope, in that connection, that the President of the Board of Trade can really speed up and get his co-Ministers, if I may use the word, "cracking" on getting the re-armament orders to the textile industry. It would be a godsend if those orders could be got out quickly to the firms while the consumer resistance still remains, and the stocks are in the shops waiting to be liquidated.
I hope, too, that he will look again at the "D" scheme. I think that he takes a rather rosy view of the conversations which he had in Bradford and Leeds. I know perfectly well that he has interpreted the conversations aright, but I do say he has taken too optimistic a view; because, according to the information

given me, there was no question that the people concerned had any conception that the so-called "D" line was going to be fixed at so low a level. I will not weary the House with examples, but would say that some of these are far too low. I sincerely hope that the Government, politics apart, will in their wisdom realise that this is a fact. A lifting of the "D" level is absolutely essential if, in fact, we are going to get the home market going and if we want to allow the smaller shopkeepers to keep in trade at all, because they cannot do so at the ridiculously low level of some of the "D" items.
The hon. Member for Rossendale spoke of reviewing the Purchase Tax in the light of these special circumstances, and I hope that we can do something which will help until some better negotiations can take place, or until currency arrangements become better able to help the export trade. Unless we have some action to liquify the solidity of the home market, while trying to get some effective measures for the export trade, it is only fair for those of us from the constituencies concerned to warn the House that unemployment may get out of hand.

10.54 p.m.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Having spent my life in Lancashire, there is one phrase which the President of the Board of Trade used this afternoon which struck me, and that was that the pre-war history of Lancashire's cotton industry, and its pre-war experience, had bitten hard into the hearts of the Lancashire people. What we have to do is to approach the problem in a more fundamental way than we have done so far.
This county has produced mountains of wealth for generations which has made ours a great industrial country. Lancashire was the birth-place of Britain's industrial development, and unless constructive and fundamental action is taken, Lancashire can become the graveyard of British industry.
I want to make two suggestions. The first I have made before, but it has now been proved right, and there is evidence also that it is a matter of extreme urgency. It is that the time has come when there should be a Commonwealth economic conference. But instead of just meeting as the Commonwealth


representatives did at the recent financial conference, where those attending do not seem to have known what action was to be taken, or what the repercussions would be on other countries, an agenda should be drawn up so that this conference can adopt a real economic policy that can be applied throughout the Commonwealth.
The second suggestion is that the Government—and I think our Government should have done it—should take the initiative in the United Nations so that all nations can look upon this problem as one world. There is to be a conference in Moscow in a few weeks, and I understand that three or four hon. Members from each side are going to it. We should send from this House a message that we hope the world intends to use the United Nations as thousands of men who lost their lives in the war intended that it should be used. We have suffered not only from military aggression but from economic aggression. The world ought to approach this economic problem so that the foundations can be laid for saving the world economically, and we might then also avoid something else that we all dread happening.
Britain has reached such a stage of development in which we cannot survive unless we remain a great trading nation. What we are considering today are only the symptoms of a much bigger problem than the House has yet faced. Our two greatest assets are coal and the skill of our people. In the past, both have been neglected, and treated in such a way that it is remarkable that the people have responded to the nation's need in the way they have. The responsibility is on every one of us. Just as our forefathers played their part in the development of economic ideas and democratic government, so we are called upon to be pioneers so that the world shall approach its economic problems in the same way. Those two assets of our country should be given complete priority. It is only in that way that the country can save itself and at the same time make its contribution to world co-operation.
World trade is not divisible, except within very narrow limits. Less buying in one part can cause less trade in another part. What we are faced with now is the result of speculation, cornering, and—to use the modern word which too many politicians like to use—stockpiling.
We can have a slump in this country today and it may not be apparent in some other part of the world until next year, or even later. I have before me a copy of the "New York Herald-Tribune" showing that it prophesied weeks ago exactly what we should be faced with as a result of the policy that is being carried out.
Australia has been caught up in the same world economic affairs as ourselves. We should be on guard against speaking too critically about Australia and New Zealand, who have been our best friends in two world wars and have been more British than many of the British in matters of that kind. We have some responsibility for the situation in Australia. Official figures are given in the Melbourne. They state:
Australian food exports to Britain and other Commonwealth countries fell sharply in the seven months to January this year. The value of food shipped to Britain fell from £171,000,000 to £111,000,000.
That was the beginning of Australia's immediate difficulties. Therefore, we are all caught in a vicious circle. It is now urgent that there should be a Commonwealth economic conference to consider these problems.
I read in today's "Manchester Guardian" a good analysis of the world textile position. It also made some comments. I agree with the article, except when it states:
The world's textile industries have been over-producing.
Is there one hon. Member of this House who accepts that? What the world is suffering from is under-consumption, and not from over-production by certain industries. Therefore, what the world is suffering from is lack of planning, lack of organisation, and a failure to bring the productive industries into relationship to the world's consumption needs. I hoped that it would be upon this basis that the Government would approach these problems in the conference for which I am asking. If this Government are not prepared to take the initiative in this way, it is only a matter of a relatively short time before a government of other political forces will come into being so that the country can be saved, as it has been in the past, from difficulties of this kind.
One country after another is making its contribution to world economic suicide. Just as our country took the


initiative through Arthur Henderson, Sir Austen Chamberlain, and two or three others at various times, we are now called upon to take the initiative inside the Commonwealth and inside the United Nations. Our concern tonight is mainly with our own country and the Commonwealth. Due to seven years' regulation by the Labour Government of our economic forces, we in this country have managed relatively better than have most industrial countries. But had we planned our economy in accordance with Labour's real policy, we should be in a much stronger position now to deal with problems of this kind.
During the past seven years we have, in many instances, sold abroad too cheaply and bought our raw materials too dearly. We have suffered from the Conservatism that has found expression in many quarters on economic and financial questions. The national interest should always be put first, as it was in the main during the war; but that is not Britain's policy at present. There are too many well-organised vested interests in this country, represented in trade associations and the like. It is there that the real restrictions are to be found, and not among the ordinary people.
For six or seven years the pottery and textile industries have made a great contribution to enabling Britain to live—and every one of us who is not employed in industry is now living upon industry, because income from other sources went in two world wars.

Mr. W. Fletcher: What about invisible exports?

Mr. Smith: That is true. We have to approach this problem from the point of view of 1952 and not of pre-war times. I think of the people to whom I belong, among whom I have lived and still live, and I ask whether they are again to be repaid for their work by frustration, disappointment, short-time, and unemployment. My memories are bitter.
I remember as a mere boy in the First World War, and then again in the Second World War, the promise that if we only played our part we should never be asked to live in that kind of world again. Yet we ordinary people of Staffordshire and Lancashire can again see the clouds coming and growing blacker week by week because of the failure of mankind to deal with this problem fundamentally

Employment can be found for both the textile and the pottery industries. We must not allow the labour force to be dispersed, for it is far too valuable. It is our economic wealth and strength. Most of the labour is skilled and should be retained within the industry and not sent to certain quarters of which talk has been heard behind the scenes.
I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will reply to some questions. Has the pottery industry made a valuable contribution to the export drive? Do exports still count in our country? I can imagine some smart Member saying that I ought to know, but for years it has been said that re-armament must not affect our export trade. Does that still apply? Will the President of the Board of Trade undertake to see that the labour force of the pottery and textile industries is kept together so that we continue to benefit from the worth of those who have made such a great contribution to our economic recovery during the past seven years? Surely we are not going to repay them by having them influenced in certain ways?
Today I put two Questions to the right hon. Gentleman. In one of the answers he said that the Government are now discussing the problems with the British Pottery Manufacturers' Federation. But why are the trade unions not brought in? They have been brought in in the past when developments have been taking place. Why have they not been brought in now? Last week I asked if the services of the Export Credits Department could be placed at their disposal, and I am pleased that within such a short time the right hon. Gentleman has given a definite answer on that. If this Commonwealth conference takes place, and if we can have a world economic conference, we may expand the needs of these industries.
The workers should not be dispersed, and in this connection I want to quote what Mr. Lewis Wright said last Saturday in Manchester, as President of the Lancashire Weavers' Association, when he said what thousands of people are thinking. He asked whether recent Government policy, which had hit the industry at every point at which it was vulnerable, was not deliberately designed to release labour for munitions, and whether the Australian Government's im-


port cuts—in spite of British Government denials—had not been agreed at the rceent Commonwealth economic conference as a result of co-operation between the two Governments. I do not go so far, but I do say that the victims of inability to deal with economic problems are the men and women now signing on at employment exchanges, or who are on short-time. These people have a right to know whether anything was said at this conference and whether it has affected our people in this way.
I hope the President will consider the record of this debate and that whatever he does he will adopt a policy so that the skilled workers—and they are all skilled workers, it is only a matter of degree—shall not be dispersed and shall not be treated in the way they have been too often in the history of our country. I hope they will see that at least the House of Commons is determined that we shall re-organise economic affairs so that they can make their contribution to Britain's economic needs.

11.13 p.m.

Mr. Ralph Assheton: I propose to detain the House for only a very few minutes this evening. I was born in Lancashire and have lived there for more than 50 years. I am bound to say that this debate has given me encouragement.
I share with the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle) the honour of representing the greatest weaving town in the world, and I can understand very well the anxiety which is felt not only there but in other parts of Lancashire, and specially East Lancashire. Those who lived through those years of depression, whether they were fortunate enough to have been protected from the worst effects of them or not, can never forget them. It would not have surprised me if there had been some bitter speeches from the other side of the House. I am glad there have not been. I thought that the tone of the debate was well set by the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) who was so well followed by the President of the Board of Trade, and I hope that we shall continue the debate in the same spirit.
The hon. Member for Rossendale, who has a considerable amount of cotton industry in his constituency, told us that there was a world recession in the textile

trade and quoted figures to prove it from the various markets of the world. In today's "Manchester Guardian" there is a great deal of statistical information which bears that out. I want to deal with that in order to deal with the question raised by the hon. Member for Blackburn, East and also referred to by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith), to whom we have listened, as we always do, with such attention.
I think the fact that there has been a world-wide recession in trade really disposes of the question put by the hon. Lady as to whether Her Majesty's Government are deliberately causing unemployment in the textile trade. I can assure the hon. Lady that that is not the case, and I suggest to her that it is rather a dangerous suggestion to make. I fully appreciate the arguments that she put forward, that we need to find an increasing amount of labour for the armaments programme, and so on. But it is not from the textile trade, so far as I understand it, that it is intended to find that labour. The textile trade is designed to supply our home market and to do considerable export trade. I do not think—although this the Government will be able to tell us—that there has been any suggestion whatever of running down the textile trade with a view to finding labour for the armaments drive. That is my honest opinion, and later perhaps we shall hear from the Government that that opinion is confirmed by the Ministers.
I do not want to make any further criticisms of the speech of the hon. Lady, because I know she feels as deeply as I do the vital importance to Lancashire of this unemployment question. But some remedies have been mentioned, and I wish to recapitulate them. I think the President of the Board of Trade should consult with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Cabinet to see whether they can suspend the Purchase Tax on textiles. If they cannot do that, will they consider modifying the incidence of Purchase Tax under the D scheme so far as it affects textiles?
I could give instances, particularly in the case of furnishing fabrics, which are important to Blackburn, of how ill this has been designed in some details, due partly to the fact that there has been no time to consult with industry; everything in the Budget is always so secret that it is not possible to make the necessary


consultations in advance. But, in the case of furnishing fabrics, out of 35 specifications there are, I believe, only two which still go free of Purchase Tax. That cannot have been intended and must be corrected when we come to deal with the Finance Bill.
The question of pressing forward with some Service Department contracts will, I know, be considered by the Government. Then we have always to bear in mind the need for cutting down our costs in Lancashire by increasing efficiency, and I hope we shall have increasing co-operation in this between the employers and the unions, because that is so important.
New industries have been mentioned. Of course we want new industries in Lancashire, and diversification, although some do not share that view. It is my view. I would remind some hon. Members, although I do not need to remind Lancashire Members, and I would say this so that all the employers in England may hear it, that in Lancashire we have the best skilled workers in the world. I was talking recently to one of the greatest manufacturers in the world, who was asked by the Government during the last war to put up a factory. He said to the Department concerned, "Yes, if you will let me go to Lancashire, because that is where I can do the job properly, and that is where the best skilled workers in the country are to be found." If other employers do not know that, they had better learn it.
Another suggestion I wish to make is that we should re-open the Liverpool Cotton Exchange as quickly as possible. My next suggestion is that the Government should go ahead with making arrangements with Japan as fast as possible. My last suggestion is that we should continue to work together in this House irrespective of party. I had the pleasure the other day of going on a deputation to the President of the Board of Trade with other hon. Members of all parties from East Lancashire. I beg hon. Members on the other side of the House and on this side to continue to co-operate in the interest of Lancashire.

11.20 p.m.

Mrs. Eirene White: We have had a very calm and sensible and well-informed debate so far upon this subject, but I must confess that I have a

sense of disappointment, though not so much with hon. Members on both sides of the House, many of whom have spent the best part of their lives in the textile industries and who naturally wish to emphasise the particular and more detailed problems of the industry with which they are acquainted. But, quite frankly, I should like to say to the President of the Board of Trade that he has missed a historic opportunity.
If I may say so, the right hon. Gentleman is a Welsh Member of sorts, and perhaps he will not take it amiss from a colleague if I give him a friendly warning that, after all, in one's youth, good looks and a fluent address may take one a long way but, as a Cabinet Minister, we expect a more substantial analysis of the problem than we have had from him today. I say that for the reason that today in this House he had the opportunity of telling not only the House but the country, and I might even suggest the world, what is to be the Conservative Party's method of obtaining a high and stable level of employment in this country.
It is natural enough that many of us should deal with the details of the textile industry with which we happen to be most concerned at the moment. But surely this is the first occasion facing any Government in this country since 1945 on which they have had a major problem of full employment. Both parties are committed—we on this side to a measure of full employment and the party opposite merely to a measure of high and stable employment. This was the occasion to inform the House by what methods, by what new techniques and new instruments, the party opposite propose to deal with this problem, different from the methods which they employed with so little success between the wars. To suggest that at present we have a high and stable employment in our textile areas is obviously false.
I represent a constituency in North Wales, which is not usually considered to be a textile area. We are renowned for our slate quarries, for our beautiful scenery and for our hospitality; but in fact in my own constituency there are at this moment upwards of 5,000 rayon workers either unemployed or on short-time or facing a prolonged holiday without pay over Easter. We have also in North Wales, on a smaller scale, our


woollen industry which is facing difficulties too.
I do not wish to be parochial in this matter, but before the war we were urged to modernise the Welsh textile industry. It is only small, but for its own locality it is important. The industry in my own division did precisely that. It modernised itself, became up-to-date and went into the fashion market. In other words, it went out on to the high seas and did not remain just a coastal vessel. Now it faces the full blast of world conditions.
This problem is being dealt with by the firms concerned—and I should like to pay them this tribute—with the greatest consideration, in that they have been doing their best to meet the immediate interests of their employees. The fact remains that we have some very difficult problems here to which, in my opinion, the right hon. Gentleman did not offer adequate solutions.
In the woollen industry, the primary difficulty has been the question of fluctuations in prices. The advice that I am given from the persons with whom I have consulted on this matter is that the woollen industry is not in such a desperate position as cotton or rayon—the outlook is somewhat more hopeful—but it is going through a very painful process of readjustment after the fantastic boom in world wool prices last year, and the revival of trade depends upon a firm basis for finished cloth and wool prices.
That is a major problem. It is not a national problem; it is an international problem, and I do not feel that we have had from the right hon. Gentleman evidence of sufficiently profound thought upon this matter. It is not a new problem. It has occurred before and will probably occur again, with extremely disturbing effects throughout the world. Have we any new thoughts on this matter—anything fresh to offer which is different from the policy of alternate booms and slumps pursued between the wars—or are we defeated by it?
In rayon and cotton we seem to have a very serious problem. It is not just a matter of raw material prices and how to deal with them; it is the more difficult problem of the whole level of distribution

and consumption in international trade. Again, what are the proposals which the right hon. Gentleman is considering? What conclusions has he arrived at? As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) put it, what is he considering as a solution of this international problem, which is affecting not only the workers of this country but the workers of the world? Have we had from the right hon. Gentleman tonight a clarion call to the world to try to get together and solve this problem? I find that completely lacking in his speech.
Turning to the home position—because there, after all, the matter is more within our own control—have we had any evidence from the Government that they have had any fresh thoughts about the methods of dealing with this problem of under-employment and unemployment when it hits this country? I should like to remind the right hon. Gentleman that when the Labour Government took office in 1945, although we did not have this particular problem to deal with, we had the extremely difficult problems of postwar reconstruction; we did not just sit down and drift with the tide. I suggest that the same constructive spirit that animated Sir Stafford Cripps when he was President of the Board of Trade should animate the right hon. Gentleman, if that is not too much to ask.
What evidence have we had from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he, in charge of the monetary policy of this country, has shown any better appreciation of the need for a new outlook in this matter? In other words, what is the value that we are to place upon the Tory pledge that they are able and prepared to maintain a high and stable level of employment?

Mr. S. Silverman: What does "a high level" mean?

Mrs. White: That is another matter which my hon. Friend can press when he catches the Speaker's eye. Surely we are entitled to have some evidence that there is some fresh method of approach. Instead of that, what have we had? We have had evidence that the Conservative Government are still using the indiscriminate weapons of monetary policy, about which we on this side of the House have always complained; that they cannot take into account any particular social or economic difficulties.
If we take the Bank rate and the restrictions on credit, for example, there may be arguments for them in general terms. But how, then, does Her Majesty's Government meet the position mentioned by hon. Members on both sides of the House, when one has whole communities depending upon one industrial unit? The criterion of this form of monetary policy is a financial one, but there are other criteria—social and economic—and if the criterion is purely a financial one, one cannot make allowances for the condition of certain industrial units. That applies in areas where, for one reason or another, there is no opportunity of shifting labour from one occupation to another. My constituency is a case in point. No work is available in the townships of Flint and Holywell, other than in the textile industries, on which the people are dependent for a livelihood.
A large enterprise with resources may be able to carry on for a fairly considerable period, but the financial stability of smaller enterprises may not be so great, and they may need extra financial help. Nevertheless, the disastrous effect on the workpeople is just the same whatever the financial status of their employer. How do the Government propose to deal with that? If they are to use monetary means alone, how do they bring the social factors into their economic planning?
We believe that the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to have taken a different attitude towards Purchase Tax in the present situation of the textile industries. In his Budget speech the Chancellor told the House that, realising that there are difficulties in consumer industries, he is proposing to keep the level of purchasing power this year similar to what it was last year. Again, this is an undiscriminating monetary method of dealing with a particular industrial problem. It is like a blindfolded man wielding his bludgeon and knocking down the good, bad and indifferent.
Why have we not had evidence from the Conservative Party, if they really are converts to the philosophy of full employment, that in their financial policy they propose to take the steps which will meet our industrial needs? By raising purchasing power in the way in which the Chancellor has done in the Budget, they have raised the purchasing power of the middle and upper classes, the people in

a position to have stocked up last year with clothing, household textiles, furniture, and so on. If their purchasing power is increased in that way, the money need not go, and in the circumstances probably will not go, to help the industries which are in special need at present. It may go on wine, women and song, and that will not help the textile industry.
Although there is some belated conversion on the other side of the House, we have evidence that in the highest quarters of the Government there is not an adequate appreciation of the need to fashion the implements of economic policy to meet the difficulties with which we are confronted at the moment. I feel very strongly that as it is purely a revenue raising matter in the present situation, Purchase Tax should be taken off textiles completely or the D level should be very much higher.
The Government cannot do everything, though they can do a very great deal more than they have. Industry itself has to face these problems and find many of its own solutions. What concerns me so much in the present situation, if it is allowed to continue without far more enterprising methods of dealing with it, is precisely this.
In the last few years since 1945 we have managed to secure to a very large extent on both sides of industry acceptance of the idea that we should improve our industrial methods and do everything which is covered by the umbrella term "productivity." Anyone who knows anything of working-class psychology knows that the minute this feeling of uncertainty arises, at one blow much of the confidence upon which that spirit of co-operation was founded is destroyed. It is not only in the industries directly concerned—it is not only in textiles—that uncertainty arises. It is infectious. It spreads to the whole district. One person speaks to another and we suddenly find coming back all the old fears, phobias, complexes, and all the tightening of emotion and the restrictive outlook which we have done so much to disperse in these last few years.
We have here a problem of the most vital concern, not merely to the textile industry which is at present in difficulty, but to the whole industrial outlook of the country. For that reason I do suggest that it will be extremely disappointing to


the country if we do not have a more vigorous and constructive approach to this problem than we have had from the President of the Board of Trade today.

11.38 p.m.

Mr. W. J. Taylor: It was perhaps inevitable that this debate should range more on the western side of the Pennine range than on the eastern side, and I am therefore glad to be able now to say something of the Bradford wool textile industry. Before I do so, I should like to say that the speech of the hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White), and the earlier speech of the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle) contained an unfair attack on my right hon. Friend and his colleagues in the respect that both hon. Ladies seemed to imply that the difficulties of the textile industry started from the time that my right hon. Friend took office.

Mrs. White: I made no such suggestion. All that I was pointing to were the deficiencies in the approach of the right hon. Gentleman today.

Mr. Taylor: I am sorry the hon. Lady does not feel that she implied what I have just said. I certainly took her speech as implying that the difficulties of the textile industry started at the time my right hon. Friend took office. The hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East, certainly did say in her speech that the difficulties had become very much worse since November of last year. [Interruption.] I say that this problem, in the words of the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood), is at least five years old. It is also a fact that it has been increasing in seriousness these last few months.
While we have unemployment in Bradford of a fairly serious nature, it is not as serious as it appears to be in Lancashire. We also have part-time employment that is increasing in volume. Although the situation shows no sign of any immediate improvement, I am sure that if the right methods are adopted we can do something towards the alleviation of this very serious problem. The President of the Board of Trade posed this question this afternoon: in what markets is the textile trade going to expand? He answered that the South American markets held out more hope of success

than perhaps any others. He posed, also, the question as to what had happened to the traditional markets in those countries, and asked for a frank and free discussion. He has had that here today.
But I want to say this, and it is perhaps a little critical of the right hon. Gentleman's administration and his Department, as well as critical of the administration which preceded his. It is a fact that many deputations have attended on Presidents of the Board of Trade, and have pressed upon those Ministers and their advisers the necessity for looking more closely into the development of certain markets, which I shall enumerate in a few moments. Both this Government, and the last, could have been more successful in restoring those lost markets, which would largely have prevented the present trend, and I hope to be able to show that the margin they could have restored would have offset the comparatively low percentage of unemployment which has come into the industry.
Before I make my proposals, I would remind the House of the figures of our exports of wool textiles to the Latin-American countries. With regard to the Argentine, we exported in 1937 almost 13½ million square yards of woollen cloth. In 1951, we exported only 100,000 square yards. With regard to Chile, Uruguay and Cuba, whereas in 1937 more than four million square yards of woollen cloth were exported, in 1951 under a million square yards went to those countries. The case of Brazil merits the attention of the House, for there is a remarkable fluctuation of trade in the case of that country. In 1937, 300,000 square yards of woollen cloth were sent out; in 1949, nearly two million, but in 1951, the figure had fallen to 350,000 square yards.
The point I want to make with these examples is that the late Government, and this Government, should have paid more attention to commercial than to political considerations, and should they have been tougher in their bargaining?

Mr. S. Silverman: Is the hon. Member saying that the late Government, when it was negotiating with Argentina about how much meat, and at what price, we should take from that country, should have been bargaining not so much about the price we should pay but about how


much of our textiles Argentina should take for the meat? If that is so, is that what he and his party were saying to the Minister of Food in the last Government when he was in the middle of those negotiations?

Mr. Taylor: I am not saying anything of the kind. What I am saying is that when the Government release sterling for the purpose of purchasing goods from this country, they should insist on a condition that the country concerned should buy our manufactured goods in return for the sterling we make available to them. I anticipated such a question as the hon. Member has put, and I would say that I am not in favour of bulk buying in the sense which he is trying to pin on me; but that there should be conditions attached to the making available of sterling for trade.

Mr. Silverman: I fully understand that the hon. Member is not in favour of bulk purchasing, but only of bulk selling. What puzzles me is how he hopes to get the one without the other. He says that if we do make a bargain for bulk purchase, it would be a very good thing to make conditions about taking in return manufactured goods from this country. I quite agree. But that is not the line his party were taking when they were in opposition and we were in the middle of these negotiations. On the contrary, they were pressing the Government not to make any conditions at all, but to take all the meat they could get at any price they had to pay.

Mr. Taylor: The hon. Member is very persistent. What I said, or what I intended to convey, was that the Government should be much more strict with regard to the conditions under which they release sterling for purchases by overseas countries, and that if they were much more strict they would be able to insist on conditions which would result in the sale of our manufactured goods to those countries. The Government of the day ought to insist on manufactured goods being taken as part of the bargain.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We must have only one interruption at a time. Mr. Dryden Brook.

Mr. Dryden Brook: The hon. Member talks about releasing sterling.

What other sterling was there to release except what was released for the purchase of the meat? If that is the case, what is the sense of his reply to my hon. Friend?

Mr. Taylor: I was not at the Treasury. I cannot tell him the answer in terms of how much more sterling was available, but there were other things we wanted, and other things besides wool cloth that Argentina wanted from us.

Mr. John Edwards: It is beside the point to try to compare the 1937 figures with the recent figures. Argentina, in common with a lot of other South American countries, lived through the 'thirties, a period when they could not sell their primary products to Europe or anywhere else. In sheer self-defence they built up textile industries of their own, and there is all the difference between Buenos Aires now and the pre-war Buenos Aires. The second thing is that they have built up a lot of weaving and manufacturing establishments which want yarns. During my negotiations with the Argentine, because of the sellers' market and the demand for our yarns everywhere, I was not able to offer them the yarns they wanted in return.

Mr. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman ought to know something of the subject about which he has been talking, because he was one of the negotiators, and he did not get meat from the Argentine. All I can say is that if he had wanted yarns and had come to Bradford for them, he would probably have got his orders fulfilled. I really do not follow the point of the interruption. I will admit that there is a limit to what any Government can do in these matters; but I do say that while it is necessary for a Government to negotiate, the Government ought to be tough, and ought to put our national interests first.
Nobody wants unemployment, and I think it is wrong of hon. Members to assert in the House, as did the hon. Member for Blackburn, East, that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on this side are deliberately creating unemployment. Unemployment is not only bad for the worker, but for the employer and for the country. Therefore, I hope we shall have no more of that. We have to strain every nerve to increase our markets, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will pay


due attention to the suggestions which I have made.
Reference has been made by several hon. Members to the increasing trade barriers being put up by different countries. There is an alarming increase in the number of markets where imports of our goods are coming under the most rigorous quota control. From some markets our goods are being excluded entirely. The time has come to inquire whether we are getting value for the money we are spending overseas or are giving away more than we receive. A much stronger line is required if we are to maintain our position.
Reference was made earlier to Greece. I do not intend to deal with that matter in detail, but it does seem odd that we buy currants from Greece but, when she wants wool yarns, she goes to France for them. I should have thought there was some method of controlling the sterling which Greece was using and to prevent that kind of thing.
I should like briefly to mention Australia and the import restrictions which she has imposed. In Bradford the opinion is that Australia, of all countries, ought perhaps to have given this country, and particularly Bradford, some priority, for Bradford paid the high prices for the wool she produced last year. I agree with hon. Members opposite that these high prices have contributed to many of our difficulties. I understand that negotiations are proceeding, and I hope that something substantial will be done to meet the position so far as Australia and ourselves are concerned.
I further understand that Australia is prepared to allow 20 per cent. of the old orders to be fulfilled over the next 12 months. If she would bring that 20 per cent. into the second quarter of this year it would very greatly help the Bradford trade. Then, perhaps by the end of September, we could come to some arrangement with her about the future.
The overriding question for the Government, if they expect the wool textile industry to maintain and increase exports, is to decide whether the multilateral trade policy that they are pursuing is paying off, or whether they should consider strengthening the United Kingdom's bargaining power in its dealings with foreign countries. Now is the time to

consider that, when sterling is strengthening daily throught the Chancellor of the Exchequer's policy.
With an expanding population at home, we can continue to keep our people in full and regular employment and with a reasonable living standard only if we extend our markets. Selling more and more of our manufactured goods abroad, in the end, is the real cure for unemployment. The export trade bolsters the home trade, and our whole system may be strengthened if we fight for these overseas markets and secure them.

11.57 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Holt: I shall confine my remarks to the cotton trade, and I do not know whether some of them will be very acceptable to either side of the House. At least, they are a sincere expression of my views, and the situation is so serious that this is a time for us to come out into the open and be frank. There is rather a nice phrase credited to the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister in one of his lighter moods—"that I never know quite what I think until I have heard what I said."

Mr. S. Silverman: He does not know then.

Mr. Holt: For my part, I do know what I believe and I hope to succeed in saying it. It is essential to keep this debate in the framework of the realisation that there is a world textile recession. Everybody has done that, and I do not wish to retrace that ground.

Mr. Silverman: Will the hon. Gentleman not tell us how it came about?

Mr. Holt: Yes. There was a piled up demand after the war and textile industries quickly got going. Raw material prices went up in the beginning and then, after a few years, started to fall. When the Korean war started, the big demand sent prices up again. They have since started to come down for one or two reasons. First, people bought a lot because they realised prices were going up, but when prices went higher they stopped buying and now they will not buy until prices come down further.
If the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman), is interested, I would remind him of one or two raw material prices. There are only two major raw material prices that now are less than they were before Korea. Wool


"66's" before Korea were 145d. a pound and are now down to 119d. Hides at 22d. a pound before Korea are now down to 17d. United Kingdom American cotton on the eve of Korea was 33⅛d. per pound and is only down so far to 41d.

Mr. Silverman: Is the hon. Gentleman using the word "Korea" as a synonym for world re-armament, because Korea obviously had nothing to do with it? It was the sudden world-wide demand for raw materials that sent prices up. Korea did not cause that.

Mr. Holt: I do not intend to follow the hon. Gentleman on that track. He is welcome to his view if he thinks that is the case. I am talking of the prices of these raw materials just before Korea and now. The price of American cotton in the United Kingdom now is 41d. but the price of that cotton in New York, spot, today is 35¼d., so that our prices are still higher than America's.
I feel perfectly hopeful about the future of the cotton textile industry. I make no comments about the other parts of the industry, because I have little knowledge of them. The essential thing to realise is that, although there are many demands on both sides of the House for a clear statement from the Government on what is to happen in the future, I defy anybody to produce any foundation on which they can base, at the moment, a reliable estimate. Anyone who pretends he can is indulging in wishful thinking. What is essential is that if and when in the near future the world recession in the textile trade stops, it is vital that Lancashire then shall be competitive.
I should like to put Lancashire's position in its proper perspective to world trade. Before 1914 the proportion of Lancashire trade to world trade in cotton was approaching 90 per cent. It was last year only 15 per cent. That is some measure of its reduction. The total production of the cotton textile trade in the United Kingdom is only now 6 per cent. of the whole world production of cotton goods, yarn and woven cloth. It is just as well to bear that fact in mind when we are talking about our particular problem.
We are now in fact a very small part of the total world cotton textile trade. Our actual exports at the moment, as has been said, are put at about 25 per cent. I think it is actually 30 per cent.

in round figures. Regarding the employment position in these areas, I can best speak for my own. In Bolton this week it is estimated that there are about 11,000 people in part-time employment or part-time unemployment, however one likes to put it. It means, so far as many Bolton firms are concerned—although I gather it is rather different in Burnley and other weaving towns—working four or three days a week.
What actually is the condition of the market at the moment? It is very varied and very complicated. Some mills are still busy and others are in serious difficulties. I spoke to the chairman of one big spinning and weaving company this week. He is making some adjustments now and confidently expects that after Easter he will again be running at full-time.
What can the Government do? They can do several things, but what can they do to alleviate the present situation? I think they can do very little, and I say that advisedly. The Government could consider the D scheme and decide whether adjustments could be made to lift the level. The Government might even decide, if the Chancellor of the Exchequer thinks he can spare the money, to scrap the D scheme so far as textiles are concerned. That would be welcomed by everyone. But the final decision there, it appears to me, is whether the Chancellor can spare the money.
As regards the placing of Government contracts, that matter has already been raised, and it is only a little drop in the Lancashire bucket in any case. But if those contracts could be placed early it would help in a small way. So far as the Australian trouble is concerned, we should remember that the buying spree was coming to an end in any case. Most manufacturers in Lancashire will say that they did not expect in the months ahead to place anything like the orders with Australia that they did during the past year.
I think the Government should make clear their attitude towards the immediate future of the cotton trade and its size. That is quite reasonable and would help to clear the air, but I would put it this way. They should make it clear whether they wish Lancashire to go on and earn its own living in the world, and if Lancashire is given the


chance it can do so. But if the Government decide they would sooner have these people in engineering now, and that there is plenty of scope in engineering, they should also indicate that. I hope they will not indicate that, and I do not think there is any need for it.
I think Lancashire can earn its own living if—and on that "if" I wish to put several points. The Government should make it plain that there is no intention to protect Lancashire industry from fair world competition. I have been a little alarmed today at the way in which hon. Members have been talking about trying to break down the barriers of trade and in the next breath saying that we must keep Japanese stuff out and keep somebody else from going into the Colonies but that everybody must let our goods go through. It is extraordinary to me how people have asked for discussions with the Empire and other countries to force down these barriers and then have suddenly stopped. Nobody ever seems to mention the words "free trade."[An HON. MEMBER: "No."] All right, we will see.
Surely it is essential that while the Government continue with their efforts to make the £ convertible they should provide sufficient dollars to buy an adequate amount of dollar cotton. That provision would have an immediate effect in bringing down prices of many other qualities of cotton that can be used in place of American cotton. It is essential also that the Government should alter the arrangements for buying raw cotton, to provide the consumer with an opportunity to obtain regular supplies of quality cotton at world prices and to influence prices by his purchase or refusal to purchase. Those conditions do not exist at the moment, and that is one of the reasons for the high price of raw cotton.
It is very necessary to stress that the future of Lancashire largely rests upon quality. We cannot pretend that we can compete with the cheaper goods coming from Japan. That quality must be not at the high levels only but at all levels, and to produce that quality Lancashire must be enabled to buy regular supplies of the type of cotton it requires.
Probably most important of all in this problem is the over-all policy of the Government. It is of vital importance that the Government should get on with

the job of making the £ convertible and of forcing down the barriers of trade throughout the world. If they do not do that, the House must realise that trade must come to a standstill and that there is no future for us other than complete stagnation in every country.
I should like to conclude on this note—that in the 1930's Lancashire trade was on its knees or, colloquially, on its uppers, and my impression is that now it is very much on its toes. I should like to draw the attention of hon. Members to what I consider a very reasoned and admirable speech which was made yesterday by the President of the Master Cotton Spinners' Association in Manchester. The most interesting feature of the speech was its spirit. The President said that there were two solutions to these problems.
First, there is the restrictive and defensive attitude which thinks only in terms of cutting down and contracting. … Secondly, there is the strong and fighting attitude of an industry which is prepared to go out and win, as it has won before. It makes me angry when people who should know better talk as if we had no competition to face before the First World War. We faced and beat competition from America, from France, from Germany and from a dozen other countries. We can do it again.

12.15 a.m.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Walter Smiles: This debate today carries me back to the time when I first entered the House, when I had the honour to be the Member for Blackburn. I can remember many debates, much the same as this, which then took place on the textile situation, in one of which one of the former Members for Nelson and Colne said: "Lancashire is listening to this debate with tears in its eyes," The hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt), at any rate, has reassured us that there are no tears in Lancashire's eyes today; there is a real fighting spirit.
The hon. Gentleman did mention free trade. I believe a great many people in this House are in favour of free trade; but not free trade for this country only. If it were to be free trade more or less all over the world, that would be a different matter; but the textile industry in a great many countries has been built up into competition with us behind protection.

Mrs. E. M. Braddock: By British capital abroad.

Sir W. Smiles: Do not think that people in India have no capital. There are far more millionaires in India today than in this country.

Mrs. Braddock: British capital in Malaya.

Sir W. Smiles: I can remember that during the slump in 1931, outside a mill in Blackburn, an overall was shown to me by the manager, and he said: "If we got the cotton for nothing we could not manufacture at a price to compete with Japan."
I was in India in 1947, and I saw that the people then were terribly short of cloth. It is a custom there—just as we give presents at Christmas time—for Indians to give their wives and children presents of cloth in the spring, at the Fagooa Festival and in the autumn at the Durga Festival. There were several strikes in India because this cloth could not be obtained at any price, even if aeroplanes were sent right to the manufacturing districts. It is a different matter today. I get no complaints from India, and I understand there is plenty of cloth available now.
The hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Burke) raised the question of Japanese trade marks. I can remember very well that one of the larger cotton firms—I think it was Tootal, Broadhurst & Lee—complained bitterly several times that the Japanese were taking their trade marks and imitating their goods within a few months after they had been shown at the British Industries Fair and elsewhere. There was a match factory in Japan which was named "England" by the then Japanese Government, and every box of matches sent out from that factory was labelled "Made in England."
The hon. Member for Bolton, West, referred to competition before 1913. I can remember going out first to India in 1904, in a steamer with Lancashire cotton men, and they were "on the pig's back" and practically owned the ship because they had command of the industry all over the Far East.
Afterwards, India competed with Lancashire, and later on Japan beat India in competition. I believe that one of the reasons for the Japanese-Chinese war in the 30's was that if Shanghai, Hong Kong and other parts of China had been

left alone, they would have beaten Japan in this trade.
Competition exists all over the world. It is no good pretending that an ill-wind does not blow anybody any good. Great numbers of people in the Far East cannot afford high prices for cotton, and they depend on the cheaper sorts, made by Japan and India, for the clothes which they wear every day. Japan actually supplies that need.
The matter which principally concerns me is Ulster linen. Only a few months ago a lady in Ulster was sending a sheet to the laundry and she remarked to the girl who was helping her, "Look at that sheet—made in 1886."The girl gave the good answer, "It is time enough now to replace it." Linen has the disadvantages that it is the most expensive fabric and that it is the most durable. It lasts far too long when sheets made in 1886 are still standing up to our laundries.
The Huguenots who came to Ulster after the massacre of St. Bartholomew nearly 400 years ago would be very surprised to find that the greatest single export to the new world is linen. It is even greater than the export of Scotch whisky. In the last year the linen industry in Northern Ireland got five million dollars from the U.S.A., and in our best year we have got, in round figures, £500,000 sterling from the Argentine and £1 million from Australia.
Everybody desires to speak of Australia with great respect. Many hon. Members must have served with the Australians in one world war or the other, and we know their feeling for the Mother Country. We know that we should not have had this trouble about contracts if Australia had not been in very dire financial straits, and we hope she will very soon recover.
Some six months ago we had only 6 per cent. of unemployment in the Ulster textile industry; today we have 12 per cent. I had a telegram from the Belfast Chamber of Commerce this morning saying:
Unemployment in textiles increasing. Outlook not good. Approximately 20 per cent. looms stopped. Only about 40 per cent. on full-time. Some anomalies in D scheme should be dealt with quickly.

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Sir W. Smiles: I am not the first hon. Member today to have mentioned the D scheme.
Several linen manufacturers came to see me the weekend before last to complain about the D scheme. It seems that manufacturers who were making a decent living and keeping their employees occupied were very badly hit when some goods which were not bearing Purchase Tax were taken out of the Utility scheme. I bring this to the notice of the President of the Board of Trade so that he can see that not only Lancashire has been hit as a result of that.
Buying has stopped all over the world and the textile pipe-line is full. That is what has brought about the present depression. My four suggestions are these. The first concerns the Lancashire Cotton Exchange. It would be a good thing if it were re-opened. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Because I believe that manufacturers could then go, as in the old days, and buy exactly the quality of cotton they want for the goods they are going to produce. It also provides a hedge for them. If they are selling forward they know where they are.—[Interruption.]—I think we will leave it at that.
My second suggestion concerns the convertibility of sterling. I agree with the hon. Member for Bolton, West that this should be our aim. Convertibility would help the trade and efforts of the people of our island. My third recommendation is for Imperial Preference. That is the one thing we should go for all the time. The South American market has dried up very badly. I do not know the reason trade with Argentina has suffered. We are ready to buy Argentine products. We used to have a very good market there. There is no doubt the United States have helped the linen trade, and they have not been so harsh in their tariffs after this war as they were before.
The right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton)—and he is an important person—advised the country and the world not to buy. I am not suggesting that the whole of the slump is due to the right hon. Gentleman, but at any rate, sitting on these benches, if one looks at the coats of my hon. Friends they are like mirrors. You get a shock when you see your face, and I suggest

that it is time that all of us, and our wives also, bought some new clothes.
The question arises whether this is a slump, a depression, or a temporary recession. That question can possibly be answered by asking whether we should put our own children into the textile industry today. I am doubtful if it would be wise, unless they emigrate to Canada or Australia, where eventually a lot of people in this island are going to go, 50 million people are going to find it very difficult to earn a good living in these islands.
Not enough encouragement is being given today to the installation of new machinery in industry. Some of the provisions of Finance Bills of recent years have not been encouraging. Take a firm like the Lancashire Cotton Corporation, which was built up between the years 1930 and 1939. New buildings were erected and new plant installed, and this was all possible under liberal taxation principles introduced by a Coalition Government.
I do not want to tell a fairy story by suggesting that all our troubles would be solved by exchanging our surplus textile goods for Russian grain and timber and, much as I admire the President of the Board of Trade, I do not look upon him as a magician or even a hypnotist. I do not believe any Government can run any industry. I do not think they are capable. I am a firm believer in private enterprise and hard work. But still I think the President of the Board of Trade can do something to help and not to hinder, and I hope that this debate will enable a clever man like him to separate the wheat from the chaff, to profit by the good advice given to him, and to do something for the great textile industry of this country.

12.29 a.m.

Mr. F. Blackburn: The hon. and gallant Member for Down, North (Sir W. Smiles) will forgive me if I do not follow him on the question of the linen industry of Northern Ireland, except to say that if he is still using sheets dating back to 1886 I do not think he is making his proper contribution to the linen industry of Northern Ireland.
I am very pleased that we are having this debate and hope that something


concrete will emerge from it. My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood), in an excellent speech, set the tone for this debate; and that was followed by the President of the Board of Trade who, I think, slipped once when he became somewhat partisan, trying to make political capital out of certain contracts placed abroad in the past year. I think that he might have told the House that when those contracts were placed abroad, firms in this country had been asked to tender, and that the contracts were placed abroad with the approval of the industry. [An HON. MEMBER: "He said that."] Well, if he said that, I missed it; but I thought he was trying to indicate that something was done when my party was in power which would not have been done if his own had been in office.

Mr. F. P. Bishop: I think that it ought to be made clear that he said that the reason the orders were placed abroad was that the manufacturers were full up.

Mr. Blackburn: If the President said that, I did not hear him say it; but I am not going to adopt this morning the attitude adopted by the Opposition of a previous administration, when everything that went wrong was blamed on the then Government. I am not going to blame the present Government because there has been a recession in world trade. The present Government will not be judged on that fact—which they could not control—but upon the way they deal with the crisis of the present time. Governments come and Governments go, and this will be one of the Governments which goes; but it is the Government, and it is to them we look for action. We do not expect them to solve all the problems of the textile industry which, if helped, can solve its own.
As Sir Raymond Street, when addressing the Cotton Board's conference at Harrogate in October, 1951, said:
I do not believe that our ultimate destiny depends on what the Government does for us, but more upon what we do for ourselves; but, all the same, it is important that Government policy should be such as to create conditions in which our energies, our resources and our enterprise can yield a harvest of success.
I should like to come to the speech of the President and express disappointment that he did not put forward more concrete

ideas. He said that he would deal with the action taken by the Government. I listened carefully, but the only two items of action I discovered were the appointment of the Hopkins Committee and that the right hon. Gentleman had visited industries in the North of England.
It is right and proper that the President should make himself acquainted with conditions in the industry and get in touch with industrialists and trade unions, but we expect a little more to emerge from these discussions. We want some action to be taken. If we ask the Minister of Labour about the position in the textile industry he will tell us that he is in close touch with the President of the Board of Trade; if we ask the President he will say that he is in close touch with the Minister of Labour. We want something more to emerge than that. Throughout his speech I can find no other evidence of the action the Government have taken.
He then went on to deal with the problems that faced him. The first was that of raw materials, and that, he said, was why he appointed the Hopkins Committee. I am not going into the question of the purchase of raw cotton, as I prefer to leave that till the Committee has reported. But I would remind the House that when there was a quick rise in the price of raw wool and stockpiling took place, a suggestion was made from America that the solution was bulk buying and guaranteed prices for a number of years.
The right hon. Gentleman's second problem was prices, price control and utility. Because of the growing complexity of the utility scheme and certain complaints from other countries, the late Government appointed the Douglas Committee. Unfortunately this Government have been in too much of a hurry to accept the Douglas Report and in fixing D levels without the full consultation and consideration that should have been given to the matter.
I have been very pleased tonight to hear so much agreement from both sides of the House that the D line must be altered, or that as a temporary measure Purchase Tax should be removed. In the Budget debate last week I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he would consider removal of the tax as a temporary measure, but I got no answer. Now that the point has been pressed by


hon. Members on both sides, I hope that a little more attention will be given to it.
The third problem that the President said faced him was the world-wide decline, and I should like to take that in conjunction with the next two—the buyers' market and competitive efficiency. I do not want to under-estimate the importance of the world market to us, because if we lose the world market now we lose it for all time; but I would remind him that 75 per cent. of our trade is home trade, and therefore we must see that we have conditions in this country which will help us to maintain a high level of production for home consumption. The restriction in purchasing power of a large section of the community is not going to help the textile industry.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer tells us that it is an incentive Budget and that he has removed Income Tax from certain sections of the community. But what about the millions at the bottom who were not paying Income Tax before and who now have added burdens? They are going to find it still more difficult to purchase in the near future.
The next problem was the increase of unemployment. The President of the Board of Trade quoted for the textile industry an unemployment figure of 5 per cent. and a figure of 2 per cent. for the rest of industry. That figure was given in the "Financial Times" yesterday. I would not advise the President of the Board of Trade to suggest to the textile workers of Lancashire and north-east Cheshire that they do not need to worry much as there is only 5 per cent. of unemployment among them. They will tell him whether it is 5 per cent. or not. The hon. Member for Rossendale used the figure of 70,000, and I think it is generally accepted that throughout the textile industry unemployment is running at about that figure.
The problem does not end there. With the growing unemployment, we get a new spiral. In the past, there was a good deal of talk about the spirals of wages and prices chasing one another. Unemployment brings restriction of purchasing power. This creates more unemployment, and so the spiral goes on. When unemployment stands at 70,000, it is not only their purchasing power which is restricted. They all have dependants, and

one can count at least two dependants per unemployed person. The purchasing power of about 200,000 is affected. Those are the problems facing the President of the Board of Trade and to which we have to apply our minds.
Let us hope that after this debate we shall have some idea of what help can be given to this industry; not that we expect the Government to solve all the problems for the industry, but we do expect them to take certain steps which will be helpful to the industry.
I want to refer first to Australia and other Commonwealth Governments. Like other Members, I do not want to say anything which might be critical of Australia without knowing the full facts. Last week I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give us more detailed information about what took place at the Commonwealth Finance Conference in January. We have had no information about that conference that allows us to judge whether the decisions then taken were sufficient to solve the problems of the sterling area. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had this to say about the conference on 29th January:
Expansion and development of the great resources which each of us commands are the only real and lasting remedies, and I must say that our imaginations were fired by the extent of these resources in the overseas dependencies and in the Commonwealth as a whole.
A little later on he says:
But there will be no future unless the sterling area can overcome the immediate and pressing difficulties which face it. The whole foundations of our trade, and, therefore, our existence—the central reserves—must be preserved and must be built up again. In other words, the sterling area as a whole, and not only this country, must face up to the basic need of paying its own way. To all of us in the conference it was clear that, unless the sterling area paid its way, the stability of our currency would be undermined, with great loss to ourselves and to our friends outside, and therefore, we were all agreed that we should not spare ourselves at all in taking whatever action was necessary to put the whole area firmly back on the road to complete recovery."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th January, 1952; Vol. 495, c. 46–47.]
The surprising thing is that only two months after that speech this action was taken by Australia.
The important thing is that the sterling area must work together. The policy must be co-ordinated, or the sterling area might disintegrate, with disastrous effects


to every member of it. That underlines the importance of calling a Commonwealth conference. On Monday the Prime Minister told us that there was no evidence that Australia's action had caused unemployment in the textile industry—that was the excuse for not calling a conference. But nobody has suggested that. Nevertheless, that action is one of the additional factors that the industry has to worry about. The Commonwealth must work together and consider the sterling area's problems as a whole.
Secondly, the Government should take more positive action in international co-operation, not only to stabilise prices but to widen world markets. Action by one country can disastrously affect the economy of others. For example, American stockpiling had disastrous effects upon the economy of this and other countries in Western Europe. In the conditions under which we live, there must be more international co-operation, and I ask the Government to take the lead.
Thirdly, there is the question of Japanese and foreign competition. The Japanese must live, and they are faced with an exporting and importing problem like ours. But we have had plenty of examples of unfair competition, and the Government must be alert to act when that emerges again. We have seen in this House copies of goods produced in this country, and possibly other speakers will refer to them tonight. We are not saying Japan must be prevented from trading, as one of the Bolton Members seemed to suggest. I should like to see a liberalisation of a good deal of world trade, but when we are fighting for our lives we must consider ourselves first. It is going to be necessary for the Government to impose quotas so that the textile industry of this country can recover.
Fourthly, I touch on the placing of defence contracts. The President of the Board of Trade said that not very much could be done, but whatever is done would help the industry now. Some contracts have been placed and others are to be, and the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Rossendale was that the placing of contracts should be expedited. What can be done to help the industry, must be done.
I warn the Government to show no complacency about unemployment in this industry and think it can be swallowed up by the re-armament programme. If we lose the labour force in textiles now, we shall have lost it for all time. As has already been said, the labour force has been built up again in the past few years. One of the directors of a textile firm near my constituency was speaking to me in the House today. He said that one of the great changes recently was that they were getting back to the industry boys of 15. If we allow unemployment to continue, if there is a greater recession still, and if we look with complacency on it and allow them to go into retirement, we shall never again get back confidence in the industry.
My next point is the question of credit restriction. The Government must look at this problem again. The industry needs the help of the Government. Their policy, by raising the Bank rate, is to restrict credit. Whatever their general policy, the industry is now fighting for its life and requires all the help the Government can give it. Again, on capital investment, there should be a removal of the restriction. We must make the industry as efficient as possible and allow new machinery to go in.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Rhodes) referred to machinery being sold to America which should be going to our own factories to improve efficiency here. We can carry this idea of exporting capital equipment too far, so that we build up the industries of all other countries abroad to the detriment of our own.
The President of the Board of Trade referred to Arkwright. Hargreaves, and Crompton, whose inventions gave such a start to the industry, but the unfortunate position is that at the present time inventions like theirs would not be used in this country but would be exported to other countries. We should still be left with the old hand-loom weaving. We are partly responsible for having built up these industries in other countries, and the Government should look into the problem. It is said that if we do not export textile machinery other countries will, but let us see that our own industries are equipped as efficiently as possible.
I call for the greatest consultation and co-operation between every section of the industry. There must be a joint effort


between Government, employers, and employees. I should like to see the greatest measure of consultation between employers and employees in every factory in addition to the general consultation which takes place. I appeal to the Government to call a conference of Government, manufacturers, and trade unions, not only for the cotton industry but also for wool, silk, and linen. It might even be worth while calling in one or two Members of Parliament. We should see if we cannot work out some solution for the difficulties which are now facing the industry.

12.55 a.m.

Mr. Cyril Osborne: My only excuse for taking part in this debate is that I am a director of a number of textile companies. The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn) said that he did not blame the Government for the world-wide slump but that this Government would be judged on how it handled the problem at home. I think both statements are perfectly fair. A previous Opposition Member said that the position was very serious, much more serious than most people in this country realised. I think that is profoundly true. Unless they are very lucky, I think that every exporting industry will find themselves in exactly the same position as the textile industry are faced with today. We are facing what I would call a crisis in the world capitalist system, and we either stand or fall on the way it is handled and the measures taken here and in America. [An HON. MEMBER: "The hon. Member will soon be on this side of the House."] I have much more sense than that. At least on this side of the House we are prepared to face facts, whether they happen to please the party extremists or not.
The hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) opened this debate with a most reasonable and well-informed speech. He made only one bloomer, and it was a bad one. He was pleading that the Government should use their powers when negotiating with people like the Argentine to see that the Argentine bought more textiles from us, when we were trying, for example, to purchase meat. What he could not see was the face of his hon. Friend the Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards) who, when he was Economic

Secretary to the Treasury, had the responsibility for those negotiations. He should have seen the face of his hon. Friend when he made that extraordinary statement.
The hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough knows quite well, and I hope he will tell his hon. Friends, that he could not get the Argentine people to buy our finished textile products. They were not interested. They can make their own stuff. What the Argentine required from us was coal, petroleum, tin-plate and steel, none of which we could supply in adequate quantities or at the right price. Hon. Members should get hold of the facts.
I speak as one who is interested in one of the smaller sections of the textile industry, the hosiery trade. Hon. Members opposite may be interested to hear one or two facts. It is just a year ago this week since wool touched its highest price. A year ago what we call 64's wool, the best quality, was costing around 34s. 6d. a pound. Today we are buying it under 12s. In those days, as the President of the Board of Trade doubtless knows, deliveries were so difficult and trade was so uncertain that the trade was having to contract, not for the normal three months ahead to get delivery, but for nearer 12 months ahead.
The industry has round its neck—and the Chancellor will discover this when he wants the tax next year—contracts at 30s. and over. Yet we are pricing to try and sell at home and abroad on the basis of 12s.; and no Government can alter that. Hon. Members should get hold of these facts first before they ask the President of the Board of Trade to do things which I believe neither he nor his predecessor could possibly do.

Mr. J. Edwards: Does not the rate of interest have any bearing upon carrying this financial burden?

Mr. Osborne: I will give the hon. Member that point, but it does not make all that difference between 34s. 6d. and 12s. a lb. when one has, say, 250,000 contracts to face.

Mr. S. Silverman: rose—

Mr. Osborne: No, I will not give way. The hon. Member has more than his fair share of the time of this House. He is not a Socialist in that respect, to the extent that he does not believe in fair


shares. Hon. Members opposite have criticised, and many of our constituents criticise, the alteration in the Utility scheme.

Mr. E. Fernyhough: Hear, hear.

Mr. Osborne: That shows how little hon. Members know about it. Utility scheme schedules without specifications are utterly useless. I am not blaming the Socialist Government but asking Members of that Government the economic facts of life. After Schedule K, in the hosiery trade there were no specifications at all, except for nylon stockings. In Schedules L and M, which were issued while the party opposite were in power, there were no real safeguards at all for the general public in the utility scheme. If we are to have a Utility scheme as we understood it during the war, we must have specifications to which garments must be made. Without those specifications it is a Utility scheme in name and not in reality.
There are four points I want to make as shortly as I can, because many hon. Members wish to take part in this debate. The first is that this problem in the textile world, which from the point of view of employment shows up worst and in its harshest form in Lancashire, did not start, as some hon. Members have implied, when this Government came into power. I recommend hon. Members to examine the Economic Survey for 1951, published by right hon. Members opposite. Paragraphs 100–103 of that Survey show quite clearly that the textile industry would face the gravest and most difficult times in 1951.
No one suggests that world conditions today are easier than it was then believed they would be. Of course not. The previous Government said, on page 45, paragraph 128, of that Survey:
The account given in this Survey of the United Kingdom's economic prospects in 1951 is in many ways harsh and unpleasant.
The Survey goes on to say:
Even so, many of the assumptions on which it is based may well prove to have been optimistic.
That is what the previous Government said over a year ago. This problem of manufacturing textiles and being able to sell them abroad at a reasonable price was obvious to the previous Government 18 months ago. The only point I am

making on this is that it would be unreasonable to put all the blame for the present crisis, acute as it is, on to the present Government. [HON. MEMBERS: "Nobody has done so."] That has been inferred, if not said.

Mr. W. R. Williams: The hon. Member is trying to shoot down his own clay pigeons.

Mr. Ronald Williams: The hon. Member has made a statement quite clearly to the effect that it has been asserted that the causes of the trouble in the textile industry lay at the door of this Government. Will he indicate which hon. Member has said that in this debate, or even suggested it?

Mr. Osborne: Quite easily. I have the exact words here. The hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle) said, "This Government is deliberately reducing the standard of life by the policy it is pursuing in the crisis"—

Mr. R. Williams: That is not saying that it is responsible for the world crisis.

Mr. Osborne: One hon. Member is a Bevanite and the other an Attleeite. I recommend hon. Members opposite who will not believe that this is not a purely British problem to read the United Nations Economic Review for 1951. It says:
Unemployment in the textile and clothing industry was higher than a year ago in nearly all countries for which figures are available.
So it is quite clear that our problem is part of the world problem, and we are not going to cure it in isolation from the rest of the world.
Hon. Members should bear in mind that the textile supremacy which we enjoyed before the war has gone for ever. The Economic Review was that, taking 1938 as 100 per cent., the volume of textile production in Western countries works out for last year approximately as follows: Ireland and Norway, 203 per cent.; Belgium, 177 per cent.: Greece, 174 per cent.; Finland, 169 per cent.; Denmark, 166 per cent.; Hungary, 156 per cent.; Sweden, 146 per cent. and the Netherlands 146 per cent. Then we come to the United Kingdom—116 per cent.
So the traditional markets that we enjoyed have gone because, as this Survey says,
It is extremely unlikely that these countries will be able to develop textile exports on


a large scale. … This prospect carries with it the danger of a revival of textile protectionism in the smaller countries, which, in turn, will make the great European textile producers still more dependent upon exports to other overseas areas.
Hon. Members opposite have spoken many times about what we should do to protect our country from Japanese competition. There are two aspects to that. One is that we have not yet felt the full force of the Japanese competition that we shall have to face. At the moment Japan is employing only 5½ million spindles, whereas her capacity pre-war was 13 million. She lost 80 per cent. of her spindles during the war, and so practically the whole of her industry will be modernised and up-to-date. If we find it nearly impossible to live with the Japanese competition today, what are we to do when the Japs really get back into the full tide of their trading?
Hon. Members say that we should protect Lancashire against them. When we talk about the undeveloped peoples, the Opposition cry out that we should do all we can for the Asiatics. Shall we help them by denying them the right to earn their own living? If hon. Members opposite wish to protect Lancashire from Japanese competition, to that extent they prevent the Japanese from earning their own living.
We have an income per capita of 774 dollars; the Japanese an income per capita of only 100 dollars, a little more than an eighth of ours. The Japanese textile worker works for 7½d. per hour compared with the Lancashire worker's 2s. 7d. If we take steps to prevent the Japanese from selling their goods in favourable or reasonable conditions, we prevent the Japs from getting a decent standard or anything like the standard which our own people enjoy.

Mr. Harold Davies: Then open China.

Mr. Osborne: It is not within our power to open China.

Mr. Davies: Why not?

Mr. Osborne: Because we do not control China. That is quite simple.

Mr. Davies: Of course we do not control China, but we seem to have a lot to say in the control of policies which encourage the closing of China and stopping the very kind of thing of which the hon. Gentleman is a protagonist,

namely, opportunities for free competition. We ought not to agree with the American policy of closing the Chinese market to Japanese trade.

Air Commodore Harvey: Does my hon. Friend agree that for two years we have had a British Government representative in Pekin—

Mr. S. Silverman: The hon. and gallant Member can find his own answer.

Air Commodore Harvey: —and that he has yet to be recognised? This country has done its level best to trade, but unless one's Ministers are recognised one cannot make any progress.

Mr. Silverman: The hon. and gallant Gentleman has not helped his hon. Friend.

Mr. Osborne: I shall never need any help from Nelson and Collie until the constituency gets a new Member of Parliament.
I now leave cotton and turn to wool, in which I am more closely and personally interested. When the war ended, the Joint Organisation had 10 million bales of wool which had been accumulated during the war, and it was its task to market those surplus bales, as they were regarded, in an orderly and reasonable way.
It was thought that it would take 13 years to market that accumulation, but it has gone, as far as we can tell, within five years. So it is reasonable to say that the world has purchased—not consumed; I do not believe that it has been consumed—the annual world clip of wool plus two million bales per annum of these war-time reserves. Is my right hon. Friend sure that great quantities of those J.O. reserves were not purchased and put on one side as a currency hedge by people in Western Europe? Is the right hon. Gentleman sure that part of those reserves are not now coming on to world markets and are partly responsible for the slump?
It is of the greatest importance to us in the wool industry to know, because I believe it to be fundamental in regard to wool and cotton, that people throughout the world will not start to buy again until they have some confidence that the raw materials have touched bottom and that there is going to be stability. They purchased in great quantities a year


or 18 months ago because every time they opened their newspapers they read that wool was going up, and so naturally they bought and put away good stocks. They will not purchase today when they see that prices are going down and down.
There is no cure for the world textile problems unless there is stability in raw materials in world markets. Has the right hon. Gentleman any knowledge whether these war-time accumulated stocks have really been consumed? Or are they still coming out from those countries which, I believe, purchased them as a hedge against currency inflation?
Lest I give hon. Gentlemen the impression that I am a complete Jeremiah and defeatist, I would remind them that the world population is growing at the rate of 25 million a year and that the coloured peoples are demanding a higher standard of life. Therefore, if only there could be some stability given to world commodity prices, I believe we could turn from the present state of world markets to better times.

Mr. Harold Davies: That is planning.

Mr. Osborne: I do not care what it is as long as it produces good results. It is this psychological attitude of the purchasing public towards world prices that is going to give us the turning point in our industry. It is not Government action on isolated points. Given world stability of commodities and restored public confidence, half our troubles would be over.

1.17 a.m.

Mr. H. Hynd: I think it was rather unkind of the hon. and gallant Member for Down, North (Sir W. Smiles) to remind his colleagues that the last time this subject was discussed was in the bad old days of Tory Government before the war. He said that in those days people in Lancashire were thinking of the debate with tears in their eyes. I think they will have more than tears in their eyes when they read that he believes that the reason for the collapse of world markets and the restrictions imposed in Australia and South Africa, and all the other consequences of the crisis we are discussing, was the speech of the right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton). But it really is depressing that we are back discussing unemployment in Lancashire.
Many Labour candidates were chided during the General Election for talking about this subject. They were told in the Press that unemployment was a thing of the past and that they had no right to turn people's minds back. Yet here we are, having said good-bye to full employment discussing this depressing subject.
The hon. Member for Heywood and Royton (Mr. Sutcliffe) pointed out, for the most part, that Members on both sides have treated this subject as if this were a Council of State. I am bound to say that I thought my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Anthony Greenwood) was far too kind to the Government when he opened the debate. When the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) took up that unusually reasonable tone—unusual for the hon. Member—and said it was unreasonable to blame the Government, I found myself trying to imagine what would have happened had the role been reversed. What kind of speeches would hon. Members opposite have made against a Labour Government, led, no doubt, by the President of the Board of Trade in great form? They jeered when we on this side talked of trade recession, and had we been in power hon. Members opposite would have told us today that the trouble was all the fault of the wicked Government.
Lancashire is not so much in a mood of bravely facing a temporary recession; it is thoroughly alarmed, and with good reason, at the trend of events. The people of Lancashire see the spectre of mass unemployment, of the dole queues forming again, and the return of the soup kitchens and the pawnshops; and in this connection. I think that the President should drop the talk about this figure of 5 per cent. unemployment. That is perhaps the figure on the books, but the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Burke) and others have explained how false it is; and it only causes annoyance to the people of Lancashire because they know only too well that to say that unemployment is only 5 per cent. gives an entirely wrong impression. It gives the impression that those who talk in that way are taking the matter with far too much complacency.
We have some half a million people dependent on the cotton industry for a living, and hundreds of thousands more in other ancillary branches of the industry. The population in the industry is unfortunately much below what it used


to be, and I have some figures showing how the insured population fell from 497,901 in 1929 to 248,890 in 1947, which is more than a 50 per cent. drop. In North-East Lancashire, where my constituency is situate, the fall has been even worse; from 155,981 in 1929, to 62,837 in 1947—which is a drop of nearly 60 per cent. Those figures, I suggest, put a different aspect on the argument we have just heard from the hon. Member for Louth, who was comparing the increase in production of various countries, including our own, from 1938 to the present day.
In 1938, the number of insured workers in the British textile industry had already fallen considerably, and that point should be taken into account when comparing the figures. The right hon. Gentleman also drew attention to the concentration schemes operated and operated very effectively during the war. They operated so effectively that they cost the industry about a third of its labour force.
There are three other peculiar features about the population of north-east Lancashire. First, 42.2 per cent. of the insured workers are women, as compared with 37.1 for the whole county; and that is one thing to bear in mind when one talks of shifting workers from one employment to another.
The second feature is that unfortunately a large proportion of the younger workers are not staying in the area. They are leaving because the industry seems to them to be dying, and they are finding jobs elsewhere, with the result that an elderly age-structure is being created which is not good for the economics of the district.
The third feature is that there is just outside that area a new developing industrial district around Preston and Leyland, to which, I am told, 2,300 male workers go every day. As soon as they can find houses in this new district they are going to move their families, which will mean more women workers taken out of the industry, thereby depleting the labour force still further. It may be that is part of the Government's plan but, if not, I hope they will take that into account when considering this problem. The local authorities are gravely concerned about it, because it is facing them

with many new and serious economic problems.
I should like to mention also the position in conditions of unemployment and short-time working of many foreign workers brought here when the industry badly needed extra help. My hon Friend the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle) reminded us that many of them had gone home; but many cannot do so for political and other reasons. They have to pay the cost of their hostels, and they find it impossible to do that on unemployment pay, and some of them are getting into a desperate position. I ask the Government to pay some attention to that, because we have a responsibility to these people.
As illustrating the seriousness of the situation in Lancashire, the Board of Trade Journal last week stated:
The latest weekly production figures for cotton, spun rayon, and mixture yarns for the week ending 1st March, 1952, was very much lower, at 16.57 million lb. compared with 18.99 million lb. in the previous week.
The "Manchester Evening News," commenting on that, went on to say that 43 mills were closed all the week, and that the wastage of full-time workers in the spinning section was 973 and there was a loss of 300 part-timers. This brought the wastage for a fortnight to over 2,000. I call special attention to the fact that this is in the spinning section. Hon. Members who know the textile industry will realise the significance of that. It is the weaving side that is hit first, and we know that we are in for really serious trouble when the spinning section begins to be hit. In my constituency there is a spinning mill which has just stopped for the first time since 1923. All during the last depression it was able to carry on. Now it has stopped. That sort of thing is not lost on the people of the district.
The President of the Board of Trade mentioned more diversification. My constituency is relatively fortunate, in that it has more diversification of industry than some neighbouring towns, but nevertheless it has serious unemployment and under-employment, and the whole town is suffering. It hits the other subsidiary industries of the town. There is a large factory there which prints textiles. It went on to a four days week last week. There is another mill with not one stripper and grinder. That is a skilled


job, but men are leaving this skilled work for work that is not so well paid because of this feeling of insecurity. It is a terrible thing which is beginning to creep through the industry.
Most Members have mentioned the Australian ban, but there are two things I want to say on that. I learn from my constituency that Australia has put a stop on all the goods in the pipeline—has put a complete ban on all coloured textiles. It has been suggested to me that as a temporary measure the goods which are now held up should be diverted to the home market. Whether that can easily be done I do not know. It may be that it would clash with Government policy, because I believe that the Government want to restrict purchases on the home market for certain economic reasons and have taken steps to see that purchasing power is cut.
Why is there this shortage of sterling in Australia, when last year the price of wool rose about four times? I am not an economist, but as Australia last year got for her wool four times what she got in the previous year, it beats me why there should be a shortage of sterling there this year.
The hon. Member of Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Rhodes) drew attention to certain excessive dividends, ranging up to 45 per cent. I am told that one of the difficulties in the trade at the moment is that owing to an old custom of the trade there is an automatic profit margin at each process from the grey cloth to the finished article. Therefore, when there is a small increase in one of the early stages, that multiplies itself through the subsequent stages and gives an artificially high price to the finished product. Perhaps that matter could be examined by the Government,. or by the trade.
I am further told that even where some spinners and manufacturers have cut the price to try to keep the wheels turning, this lower price has not been passed on by the wholesalers or by the retailers to the customers. We have been told that one of the causes of this is a buyers' strike. But was not the buyers' strike to some extent contributed to by the party opposite which, a few months ago, promised that Purchase Tax would be abolished?—[HON. MEMBERS: "Nothing of the sort."] Many people told me that they

were holding up the purchase of goods because they hoped that if there were a Conservative Government Purchase Tax would be removed. These people may legitimately claim that they have been let down.
The President of the Board of Trade also mentioned that Korea had started stockpiling, and that merchants and shopkeepers had bought over-large stocks in anticipation that prices would rise still higher. That is quite proper trading in the view of the party opposite; it is called private enterprise. They do that sort of thing to try to get a profit and not to see that the best goods are produced in accordance with the needs of the people.
In "The Times" today there is a leading article headed, "Unwanted textiles." It dealt with this point in a way that is worth quoting. It says:
The trouble goes back to the spring and early summer of last year, when consumers abruptly broke off an orgy of anticipatory buying prompted by the Korean war and retired with palpable indigestion. Consumers, wholesalers and retailers, had all overbought in varying degrees. This sequence was world wide and little distinction need be drawn between home and export trades. Retail sales dwindled, especially those of household textiles, and stocks accumulated rapidly. By the autumn of last year wholesale textile stocks in this country, for example, had risen (in value) to one-and-a-half times the level to which they had been reduced in the spring, while sales had dropped by about a fifth. In consequence orders to manufacturers were steadily reduced.
"The Times" goes on to discuss possible Government responsibility in the matter.
The Government's responsibilities in the matter are mixed and to some extent conflicting. On the one side is their plain duty to prevent serious and avoidable unemployment if they can. On the other is their duty to find more labour for defence work and for any industries which can increase their exports, to permit the operation of the natural cure for temporary indigestion in the textile trade itself—and to protect the pound sterling in its still perilous straits.
"The Times" goes on to say that:
the immediate serious danger to sterling makes it imperative to prevent the accumulation of stocks and to encourage their clearance. This is what the new credit policy does.
There seems to be some justification for certain remarks made from this side of the House to the effect that the Government's new policy has affected the whole issue. When "The Times" puts it as cautiously as that, hon. Members are entitled to comment in their own way along the same direction of thought.
What are the remedies offered to us? So far, there has been practically none from the Government Front Bench. In opening, the President of the Board of Trade, made two points, that he would try to limit foreign competition and to divert Government contracts. There was nothing very definite, but he expressed the wish to do something in those directions. That is not going to satisfy Lancashire when it reads this debate. From our correspondence we know that Lancashire people have great hopes of the debate, and the Government ought to remember the word used earlier in this sitting by the Secretary of State for the Colonies and consider following a more robust policy.
I fully support the constructive suggestions made by my hon. Friends the Members for Burnley (Mr. Burke) and Ashton-under-Lyne, and I would call attention to the letter, referred to by the hon. Member for Rossendale, in "The Times" today, from Major Beddington Behrens, a well-known industrialist. Major Beddington Behrens made an interesting suggestion, that certain leading firms would be willing to take orders without charging any profit to maintain their operatives in employment. He says:
Bargain prices could thus be obtained by the Government, which must need immense stocks of clothing to re-equip the armed forces and civil defence. It is better that such orders should be given now than later, when they will compete with civilian demand.
That suggestion might be worth following up by the Government, if they are looking for bargain prices at the present time. Another suggestion in the same letter was:
If the workers in the textile industry are suddenly dispersed it will deal a body blow to future British exports, because the demand for British textiles has been due to their specially high quality—the product of skilled labour.
That brings me to comment on one or two suggestions that have come from the other side about the transference of workers from one industry to another. The idea in some quarters seems to be that because there are so many vacancies here and so many unemployed there it is a simple arithmetical matter to take the people from there and put them to work here. The hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt), who sits on this side, although he ought to be over there, said that the weavers could go into engineering.

Married women weavers are not suitable for engineering work, generally speaking.

Mr. Nabarro: Would the hon. Member allow me? I am sure this argument cannot hold water. Quite a large percentage of weavers in industry are doing this. I have been concerned with the transfer of these male weavers to engineering where they are wanted. That is not unreasonable.

Mr. Hynd: The hon. Member is talking about carpet weavers. We are principally concerned today with the cotton industry, and any remarks I make must be regarded as affecting that industry. I would not attempt to argue with the hon. Member, particularly about the carpet industry.
The hon. Member for Bolton, West, also took the opportunity of mentioning the possibility of re-opening the Liverpool Cotton Exchange. We have it on the authority of the President of the Board of Trade that it is impossible to open the Exchange at the present time. He gave us cogent reasons, and I take his word for it. Whatever merits there may be in the suggestion of re-opening the Cotton Exchange, I seriously suggest that this would be the wrong time to do it. It is not the time when the industry is struggling with difficulties to encourage the kind of speculation that would follow.

Mrs. Braddock: Any time would be the wrong time.

Mr. Hynd: On the question of buying United States cotton, the right hon. Gentleman mentioned shortage of dollars. The hon. and gallant Member for Rochdale (Lieut.-Colonel Schofield) said that we were buying non-dollar cotton as a consequence. My information is rather different. What is happening is that we are buying American cotton, not from America but from other countries, and paying a higher price for it than if we were buying direct. If the Government would only release sufficient dollars to buy U.S. cotton direct there would be a saving under that heading.
May I quote from the speech, which has already been referred to, by Mr. George Hasty, President of the Federation of Master Cotton Spinners' Associations in Manchester yesterday? He said that
a broadminded reception by the Treasury of our request for more dollars to buy


American cotton would have the effect of bringing outside growths down to their right spinning value.
There is something else which the Government might investigate. I liked the suggestion that came from the hon. and gallant Member for Bedford (Captain Soames) about placing orders for clothing for Arab refugees in Palestine. That is a good practical suggestion which I should like to be taken further. I have great hopes for the hon. and gallant Member when his mind works on those lines. I can see him supporting the Colombo Plan and going on to other Socialistic methods. It is a common-sense proposal that, in a world where there are millions of people requiring clothing, it should not be beyond the possibility of this country, with idle looms and idle workers, to supply them. It is only a matter of organisation, or of international politics—of people getting together to work out ways and means. That is the ultimate aim of all our policy. It would result in our looking for a policy of expansion instead of the continued suggestion of restricting imports and exports and one thing or another.
I want to draw special attention to the home market, which is the principal market for the cotton industry. Here we are getting very little encouragement from the Government, because the policy of the D scheme, restriction of credit, the increase in the cost of living, and cutting down of purchasing power has all tended towards the opposite direction. Instead of the home market showing any signs of expansion it shows every sign of restriction in the near future.
I ask the Government to give some guidance to Lancashire as to whether they regard this as a short-term or a long-term policy. We have been told by many hon. Members today that they are confident and optimistic and that they have great hopes. But that is not enough. We cannot live on optimism and hopes. We want some positive action by the Government. I suggest that the Government might very well consider making northeast Lancashire a Development Area in order to give it the advantage of the special legislation applying to such areas.
It is the duty of the Government to help. The hon. Member for Heywood and Royton said that it was the duty

of the Government not to interfere with industry but to guide it. I suggest that the Government have a bigger duty than that, a duty to the nation, which must supersede any qualms they may have about interfering with industry, if that industry is not satisfying the needs of the nation. I suggest to the party opposite that they must not allow any of their traditional opposition to planning to get in the way of bold measures to tackle this problem before it gets any worse. If nothing is done the Conservative Party will forfeit any support they still have in Lancashire. If we go back to the bad old days of before the war, they will never be forgiven.

1.47 a.m.

Air Commodore A. V. Harvey: I agree with much of what has been said by the hon. Member for Accrington (Mr. H. Hynd). He referred to textile companies' dividends as did the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Rhodes). I think he said that dividends should be limited to 5 per cent. I shall be very happy if Textile equities yield 5 per cent. in the next two years. I think many of them will forgo dividends altogether. And do not forget that in the years between the wars capital was written down considerably, and shareholders lost part of their investment. But my case this morning is not on behalf of the shareholders, but on behalf of the workers in my constituency.
The hon. Member referred to firms selling at a loss. One firm in Macclesfield was taking orders for rayon from Ireland before Christmas at a loss in order to pay wages, and that has been done for several months. Several hon. Members opposite have referred to November as being a significant date, and while they did not say that this Government was responsible, the implication was that it happened since the General Election.
I think I was the first Member, certainly in this Parliament, to raise the question of textiles in this House on an Adjournment debate on 23rd November, 1951. Last June and July salesmen coming back from the United States of America were telling me they were empty-handed of orders. Others could not get orders at home and in the Colonies, and there was a steady con- 

striction of trade in the silk and rayon industry. Silk is usually affected first in a recession of trade in the textile industries because it is a semi-luxury, or is thought to be.
In the debate on 23rd November, I said:
The alarming thing is that in my constituency, which is concerned with weaving and the manufacture of silk and rayon, orders, both from abroad and at home, have steadily been declining since the summer. … as I see it, the textile trade may be in for a very difficult time. I should like to think it was only a phase, but the industrialists who have spent their whole lives in this business do not seem to think it is.
I also said:
If we wait until next April before something is done many firms will be bankrupt and many thousands of people will be out of work.
My right hon. Friend, who had only been at the Board of Trade a fortnight, could not have been responsible in any way for that situation in November.

Mrs. White: Would the hon. and gallant Gentleman tell us, if there were so many indications in the rayon industry as well as in the silk industry, as I think he said, that the market was tightening to that extent, why was it that production of rayon in this country in November reached the highest point, I believe, for any time?

Air Commodore Harvey: Production may well have reached the highest point, but it was not sold. They were quite right not to stop production because the fall in sales might only have been a temporary phase, perhaps due to the dislocation of work because of the General Election. I hoped it was. In my constituency some of my political opponents said it was a stunt and that workers were being stood off because of the Election. I only wish it had been. I would willingly have suffered any humility that might have come my way if that had been true.

Mr. Henry Usborne: I find myself somewhat confused. The hon. and gallant Gentleman has just said that industrialists in his constituency, with virtually generations in the trade, were themselves aware that this was not a passing phase but was something which was foreseeable ahead and they believed it would be critical and

severe. If that experience was there and that fact was known by them, can the hon. and gallant Member explain to the House how it is they ever produced so fantastically so recently when they knew perfectly well it was coming?

Air Commodore Harvey: In my constituency we manufacture pure silk and rayon, and it was rayon mainly that was over-produced at that time. When the Parliamentary Secretary replied to that debate he said:
I am certain that the House will appreciate that actual harm might be done to the industry whose cause my hon. and gallant Friend has so eloquently pleaded if we were to treat as permanent a shortage of work which may be destined to be only temporary."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd November. 1951; Vol. 494, c. 837–8, 841–6.]
That was way back in November, and it would have been quite wrong of the Government at that stage to have taken drastic action which might have turned the whole industry upside down only to find afterwards the buyers coming into the market again. But now the time has come when the Government have to take very drastic action in many directions.
We have had in the last three Parliaments an all-party silk committee, and I have had the honour and privilege of being its chairman on all three occasions. As a small body representing the silk constituencies we have worked extremely well together in facing our problems boldly and, on a non-party basis, in putting forward to the Ministers of the day suggestions which I think sometimes have been appreciated.
If we are to export textiles, a flourishing home market for quality goods is absolutely essential. It is no good Britain manufacturing a lot of cheap textiles. Other countries can do that, and cheaper than we can do it. We have to produce quality good in the production of which generations have been trained—beautiful garments which will sell at competitive prices. But it has been admitted on all sides today that foreign competition tends to increase, and our manufacturers have to adjust themselves to new conditions. I do not say they have had a honeymoon for seven or eight years, but they have had a seller's market. They must get together more and pool their ideas and methods. There are many things they can do. They work extremely well together in the rayon


industry—except for a few who will never work with anybody. Sir Frederick Goodale is now chairman of their association.
I ask the President of the Board of Trade not to look upon silk as a luxury. Silk is a very fine material, but it is used in many different ways for strengthening other textiles and improving them. I should like to see an international agreement which would bring about the stabilisation of silk prices. We have had fluctuations in the prices of raw silk from Japan which had to be paid for in dollars. Perhaps the Minister would tell us what progress is being made. It would certainly be an advantage to the silk industry and to textiles of a high quality if the Government adopted the principle that, over and above a certain wholesale price, no additional tax would be chargeable.
The D scheme has had a very mixed reception. In the industry I should say that more were against it than were for it; but do not let us forget that it was the Labour Government which drew up the terms of reference for the Douglas Committee, and in my view the terms of reference were far too narrow. Had they been wider we might have had quite a different report; but that is too late now.
Whatever advantage the D scheme may have is largely negatived because the rate of tax of 66⅔per cent. is still too high to encourage the production of high quality goods. I am afraid we are going to have less high quality goods produced, and I think it is quite wrong to classify silk, cotton and rayon and nylon all in the same category for the purpose of assessing tax. It would be far more realistic if silk and nylon were placed in the wool category. I am not a technical expert, but that is what I am told by the experts in the industry. Apparently the basic costs are similar and that is a very good reason for it. Special provision has been made for linen in this respect. Many linen household textiles are in a category bearing a higher exemption rate than similar goods made of cotton or rayon.
In connection with the Australian cuts of imports, my sympathies are to some extent with the Australians in their economic difficulties. It is a vast and complex problem. The hon. Member for Accrington (Mr. H. Hynd) asked why this had been brought about. It has been

brought about for the reason that the price of wool has been up twice and down twice in the past 18 months and the Australians have spent hundreds of millions of pounds more abroad than they have exported. They bought mostly from this country and they can no longer go on doing it.
But I think that the way the cuts have been introduced has been quite wrong apropos the British manufacturer, because his business with the Australians is always done on trust; letters of credit are rarely opened; whereas the Czechs, the Italians, the Swiss and the French who trade with Australia mostly insist on letters of credit. This means that orders placed in those countries by the Australians will be honoured but in the case of Britain, where no letters of credit have been opened, I understand that the goods will not be accepted. Where the goods have been sold, but not through letters of credit, I hope that the Australians will be persuaded by some means or another to accept goods where it can be proved that they were genuinely ordered before the date of the import cuts.
Much has been said about diversification of industries in the textile areas. I quite agree that we do not want to break up these industries. They bring us much foreign currency. But let us remember and be realistic about it. Other countries are producing, or will produce, far more textiles than they did before the war, and my own view is that the volume of textiles that Britain can export will be less than hitherto. We have to accept that. I am not a pessimist, but I believe that we have to make up for it in quality and in value. We may achieve the same figure by better methods.
So we may have to face the fact that there will be a considerable number of people who in future cannot be employed in textiles. If we have to have a rearmament programme in the next few years, which appears to be necessary, the Government should bring some of the light engineering industries into places like Macclesfield and Congleton, where 70 per cent. of our trade is textiles.
It has been said that textile workers are unable to do the other type of work, but I do not believe it. During the war the textile workers turned over to making difficult components for the aircraft industry—it was skilled work—and they can do it again.

Mr. Hale: I have listened to the hon. and gallant Gentleman with great attention and a very great measure of agreement. He is right in saying that he called the attention of the House to this earlier than anybody else. I intervene because I believe this to be a vital point. The loss of the textile industry from 1914 to 1918 was due not merely to the war but to the fact that, in war conditions, we had to develop textile industries overseas and turn our workers into armament industries. When operations were over, those workers had nothing to which they could return, and fear of that exists now.
I am grateful to the hon. and gallant Gentleman for mentioning re-armament. The word has not been mentioned for a long time; it appears to be regarded as a naughty word. Is not the position that if we drive the textile workers into armament industries we shall help to build up the textile industries of other countries and there will be nothing to which the workers can return when the re-armament programme is finished?

Air Commodore Harvey: That is a fair point, but unfortunately, the re-armament programme has yet to get under way. We heard recently how little we have got out of it. Even if we had not had a rearmament programme, we should still have had the same situation in the textile industry. Fifteen hundred people in Macclesfield alone, apart from Congleton, are partly or wholly unemployed. The re-armament programme might make a difference in the long run, but it has not so far done so. Some of the light engineering industries ought to be brought into these more difficult areas.
An industrial site has been prepared in Macclesfield and some of the services are available. Yet last August the Labour Government gave the North Western Region Gas Board a permit to establish a new showroom, with enormous plate glass windows and demonstration rooms, in the middle of the borough. I have seen the chairman of the North Western Region Gas Board and am convinced that in normal times this would have added to the efficiency of the industry, but I contend that that was the wrong time to issue such a licence when I cannot get a licence, for a smaller value, for a firm to build a comparatively small factory for manufacturing goods of an important

nature in the town. I blame the Labour Government for that. People passing through the market place are horrified to see this showroom, for it could have remained in its former premises for a year or two until the lease ran out. That may be a minor point in this House, but it is an important point in Macclesfield.
Congleton, which was almost a distressed area before the war, is going through a difficult time. There was recently a fire in one of its textile mills, and as result 400 or 500 people were thrown out of work—many fortunately have obtained other work. I hope that the Government will give an assurance that the licence will definitely be given for rebuilding the mill.
Another firm not actively employed in textiles had a Government contract for packing since 1943. That contract is now going out to tender again, and 150 people may be stood off work next week. I have put the facts to the Ministry of Supply, and I hope that some action will be taken.
I want the Government for a short period to look upon the textile areas as semi-development areas and feed them with work. If the people on the spot are asked whether they would rather make ailerons for new types of fighter aircraft or stand on street corners kicking their heels, they will say that they would prefer to work. Nothing is more demoralising than for men to be out of work for any length of time, and so I hope they will be given work.
I have one request to make to the Minister regarding supplies of material to N.A.T.O. countries. Could it be arranged that parachutes made of British nylon could be supplied with the aircraft? I believe that the Purchase Tax should be adjusted. I have read the debate which took place during the war. The present Leader of the Opposition said then that he thought it was tax only for the duration of the war, but he continued it after the war for six years because it suited him to do so. The textile industry should have initial allowances for replacement of machinery continued, otherwise the mills may not be capable of keeping up to date. These allowances should be continued for at least another year.
I should like to see a Commonwealth conference, not of Finance Ministers, but


of Prime Ministers, together with their financial and trading advisers. We often have requests in this House for a meeting of the leaders of the four great Powers, but in my opinion it is equally important that the Commonwealth Prime Ministers should get together. The meeting should not necessarily be in London, but if they really got down to the task much could be achieved. Unless we pull together as an Empire I believe that we are all in for a rough time. It is our only salvation, and I hope a Conservative Government will accept this opportunity at an early date.

2.7 a.m.

Mr. W. R. Williams: I am rather sorry in one respect that my first speech as the Member for Droylsden should be coinciding with a serious and rapid deterioration in the conditions of employment of the people who reside in the four towns which go to make up the Parliamentary Division of Droylsden. I feel that I would be almost a super-optimist after all these hours of debate to think that I could make any novel contribution, but it seems to me that there is a common theme throughout the whole of our discussion. It is that the situation in the textile industry is grim in the extreme, and as far as I can see the situation is going to get worse still.
We are all agreed that unless we are very careful the serious unemployment that has developed in some of the N.E. Lancashire towns is likely to have a serious adverse effect on other industries not only in that area but in other parts of Lancashire and the North of England. I am afraid I cannot claim expert technical knowledge of the textile industry, but after some experience in the trade union world I am not sure that is always a disadvanage, for I find that if one gets a sufficient number of experts together they eventually cancel each other out and there is a chance for powers of observation and deduction to become more effective than the experts' knowledge.
Be that as it may, the situation has deteriorated so much in my own constituency that I thought it desirable to make a special investigation. I decided the best way to do that was to get in touch with the employment exchanges in four towns. I did that, and I am bound to say that it would be incorrect

to state that the situation in Droylsden is as bad as say in Nelson, or Colne, or Burnley. But what I must say is that the situation, even in a constituency like Droylsden, which is not entirely dependent on textiles because it has some diversified industries, is deteriorating rapidly and to such an extent that where one could count the wholly unemployed or temporarily stopped in tens or dozens six months ago, we must now unfortunately count them in hundreds. So, what must it be like in areas such as those represented by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) and other hon. Members from Lancashire?
I have spent a good deal of time in Lancashire between the two wars. Some may argue that when in Liverpool one is only on the perimeter. [AN HON. MEMBER: "It is the capital of Wales."] Well, some of us think that it might be even more influential than Cardiff, although, for my own part, I would back Caernarvon. But I hope that hon. Members will not tempt me any further on that point. What I was saying was that I have 20 years' experience of Lancashire. I was there during the inter-war years. I saw some of the depression even on the Liverpool side of the cotton industry in those days, and I know from personal contacts of the terrific depression in Lancashire between the wars.
When renewing association with Lancashire once again, I found that there was a sense of security in the county which had been very much absent in those inter-war years and that security had brought happiness to the homes and the lives of thousands in the area. It is, therefore, all the more tragic so far as I can see that, for the third time in my experience of the county we are now once again in the trough of depression. Two things are likely to happen as a result. Those in the textile industry are going to lose their confidence for ever in that trade, and there will be a position similar to that which some of us saw in Wales years ago, where the people lost confidence in coal and the quarries, with the result that parents refrained from sending their sons into what were the traditional occupations of the areas.
I am satisfied that we are reaching the point in Lancashire where the people are losing faith and hope in the textile


industry. The more I go round the various mills, the more I find skilled workers leaving the industry; workers difficult to replace in an emergency; and management and union officials assure me that the people who are going out in these circumstances are not likely to return. That is the view held by managements and workers in that area.
The second point that occurs to me is that unless we are very careful some of the towns in north-east Lancashire may have to make an important decision shortly—whether they are going to continue to place their faith in the textile industry. Are they going to depend solely on textiles? Are they going to place all their eggs in the one basket? It seems to me that despite the fact that, to carry out the wishes of Sir Stafford Cripps and the Labour Government when they were in office, they undertook the responsibility of relying on cotton, thinking there was a future in it, if they are going to experience this depression again they are inevitably bound to ask themselves if they can afford to do it, and they will press the Government to bring them some other industries not so liable to the fluctuations of world trade and the slumps which the textile industries have experienced over many years.
I was rather intrigued and not a little perturbed by one or two remarks of the President of the Board of Trade. He said the problems are such that they must be grappled with and resolved by the industry itself. I know from notes of a meeting he had with representatives of the industry in November that he made it clear that he regarded the solving of these problems as being a matter for the industry. I am not one who denies that there is a great part for the people in the industry to play in the solution of these problems, but there are elements which are beyond the capacity or skill of anyone engaged in the industry.
The basic core of this problem is international, and must be dealt with internationally. Unless there is stability in raw material allocation, prices and distribution on an international level, nothing that the industry can do will be anything but abortive. I should like an assurance that the Government are

taking up this matter seriously, and not just remitting it to the industry and hoping that it will alleviate in due course some of the distress. It must be solved between Governments.
That leads me to ask how many conferences are taking place between Governments of the Commonwealth on these issues. We never hear anything about them. I have here the Colombo Plan, Command Paper 8080. Some of us placed great faith in the potentialities of that plan. But one hardly hears anything about it. One wonders what has happened to it. There are elements in that plan which might be useful for discussion between Governments in regard to the issue we are now discussing.
I agree with those hon. Members who say that colonial development is something which can very much affect, and improve, the conditions in the textile industries here: but we do not hear very much about it. I hope that the hon. Gentleman who is to reply to the debate will lift the veil a little and let us into some of the secrets with regard to the discussions which are taking place at international level on some of these important problems.
With some trepidation I refer to the Australian restrictions. It would be improper for me, or for any other hon. Member, to give the impression that we were challenging the sovereignty of any member of the Commonwealth. But I do not think it is improper in a family of people for one member to suggest kindly to the other members of that family that they have made a grievous mistake in enforcing cuts of a particular extent and at a particular time.
We could point out to our Australian friends that there are mills in the constituencies of many of us which are committed up to the hilt in the Australian market, and that those concerned are wondering what they are going to do with the goods which they expected to deliver to Australia. Someone has had to finance these goods which probably will have to be sold at prices less satisfactory than would have been received for the contracts with Australia.
I do not think it would be unreasonable to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to say what discussion took place in the London Conference on this issue, and, more important, whether it is proposed to ask


Australia and others, in the light of what has been disclosed in this debate, to review the situation. I do not think it would be difficult, because we have already had expressions of opinion from Australia which show that there are people there who are disturbed by the Australian Government's decision. I cannot help thinking that if the cuts had been imposed by a Labour Government in Australia there would have been a furore in the British Press, which seems to have been strangely quiet as the decision was made by a Conservative Government in Australia. But the British Press has been strangely quiet.
Dr. Evatt has said that he regrets the Australian Government's decision and that he thinks there will be serious repercussions upon Australia herself in due course. But I leave that; it might be regarded as a biassed opinion if I quoted him. Here is the "Melbourne Herald" not the "Daily Herald"—in which the financial editor says:
The real answer to Australia's difficulties is to be found not in reducing imports but in increasing exports. Australia must beware of the 1930 mentality, which envisaged a solution wherein every country should sell more and buy less.
Then the writer adds this caustic comment:
This opinion still seemed to survive at the 1952 London conference.
The important part of the quotation is in that very caustic comment, and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will meet that point.
I refer to one other subject, as one who has spent a lifetime in the trade union movement. Although the Government can do a tremendous amount and will have to undertake great responsibilities if we are going to revitalise this industry. I still believe that the people in the industry have a tremendous part to play. Never in the history of this industry has greater goodwill and co-operation been required if it is going to overcome the many problems that are approaching. It would not be a bad idea if the President of the Board of Trade whispered in the ear of some of the people on the managerial and administrative side of the industry not to be too silly at the present time in pressing for certain things that they may think are very justifiable in normal times, but which, if pressed too far now, could produce a deadlock and complete lack of goodwill.
I see the Minister of Labour is here, and I believe that he will subscribe to my view. Never did the industry require more goodwill and patience than now. If it means a bit of give and take on both sides, that is better than that men and women should suffer as they suffered in the inter-war years.

2.29 a.m.

Sir John Barlow: It has been an interesting debate, in that there is such unanimity on the seriousness of the situation and in that suggestions have come from both sides on how the situation can be improved.
There was a very interesting speech by the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Rhodes), who attacked the profits that some textile companies had made in recent years. I agree that some of the profits, quite frankly, have been too high. These were not profits obtained in the ordinary way of business. Many of them were largely automatic increases in the value of stocks and not ordinary profits. These fictitious inflationary profits largely disappeared in high taxation. When a loss is faced, as it will be in many cases in the near future, it means that there is much less capital to meet it than previously.
As to the supposed high dividends, many companies started with small capital many years ago and ploughed back their profits to improve and extend machinery. I think that the hon. Member would find that the dividends paid on capital actually used in these companies was very moderate indeed. If he takes the dividends paid in the previous 20 years up to the war, they would be in most cases minute.
Certain Members opposite have tactfully suggested that this slump first became noticeable about last November. The textile industry, as all Lancashire Members know, is complicated in that it really consists of four or five completely separate industries which people call the cotton industry. There is spinning and weaving, finishing, merchanting, and there are different stages for each of these. In some cases from the time the cotton goes to the spinning mill to the time it is sold in the shop it often takes two years. It means that the process of passing through the pipe-line covers a very long period.
The suggestion that the slump started in November and that the present Government have the responsibility of putting the industry on its feet again is not quite a fair one. Undoubtedly the last Government must bear some responsibility for the things it did, or did not do, which have led to the present position.

Mr. Fernyhough: If the hon. Member suggests that the slump did not start last November but a long way back, how is it that Lancashire manufacturers could not accept Government contracts in connection with re-armament?

Sir J. Barlow: There were certain lines of goods in which manufacturers were filled up and for which they could not take more orders. The Government required these goods very quickly and, as they could not get them placed in Manchester, they were placed abroad. I think that to a certain extent the last Government are responsible for some of the difficulties of today. I do not want to over-emphasise but to put forward what I believe to be the case. First, the abolition of the Liverpool Cotton Exchange did not help matters. It has been explained by the hon. and gallant Member for Rochdale (Lieut.-Colonel Schofield) that outside growths became necessary and were much more expensive to the extent of 5d. or 6d. a pound.
In the case of American cotton the standard line known as middlings before the war, known as symbol Atus today, could be bought more cheaply in New York and shipped to this country than is being supplied by the Cotton Commission today. I believe that on Tuesday, the day before yesterday, the basic price in New York for what was known previously as middlings and is now known as symbol Atus was 41.18 cents, which converted into sterling is about 35.3d.; to which should be added brokerage, about 1½d., and insurance and freight, 1.75d. per pound, making a price landed in Liverpool of 38.55d. per pound. That compares with 41d. quoted for the same thing by the Cotton Commission. That difference in price of a little over 2d. may not seem very great, but it is all contributory to higher prices and makes it more difficult to compete with foreign competitors when we have to quote abroad.

Mr. S. Silverman: Since the matter is so clear, can the hon. Member explain why the Government, of which he is such an indignant and loyal supporter, does not propose now to re-open the Liverpool Cotton Exchange?

Sir J. Barlow: I gather that the matter is under consideration, and we are hoping for a report in the near future from a committee which is sitting on the matter.

Mr. Silverman: There may be a report from a committee which may be sitting. But the hon. Member will recall that the President of the Board of Trade, in his very full and lucid explanation of his policy at the beginning of this Parliament, made it very clear that he did not propose to re-open the Cotton Exchange; and that he was really appointing a committee only as a kind of alibi in view of the representations made to the electorate during the Election.

Sir J. Barlow: The hon. Member makes certain statements—

Mr. Silverman: The President said it himself.

Sir J. Barlow: I have nothing to add to that. What I am pointing out is that one case of the drawbacks and difficulties of foreign competition in textiles today is the action of the former Government in abolishing the Liverpool Cotton Exchange. As many of us pointed out at the time, when such a thing is once abolished it is very difficult to bring it back to life again—

Mr. Silverman: Now is the time.

Sir J. Barlow: These things which were built up out of custom over the ages, once they are destroyed, are very difficult to restore, and we warned the Government at the time. We are doing our best, because we think it will help the Lancashire industry to become competitive.
Another thing which did not help matters last autumn, when the textile trade was in a very ticklish position, was the free advice of the right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton). That advice went round this country rapidly, and it went round the world. The whole position was very delicate at that time. A recession was expected and perhaps the right hon. Gentleman thought he was being clever by advising the housewives not to buy at that time. It would have been infinitely better for the industry,


and this country, if there had been a slower slackening oft in the autumn. Instead of that, strange as it may seem, a great many people took the right hon. Gentleman seriously. That meant a stop in buying for a time, which had very serious repercussions. That is another thing for which the last Government were responsible. I will not go into the question of Government purchases on the Continent last year because that has been raised already.
Fourthly, the last Government did not anticipate the Japanese competition which was bound to come. We all knew it was coming, but the last Government did nothing to forestall it. We had great experience of it in the 1930s. The Japanese spindleage and looms were increasing very rapidly, and it was very evident that there was going to be serious competition from that quarter. I was one of the people of Manchester who criticised the Government in the 1930s very severely for not taking any action when this competition was so evident. I criticised the last Government for not taking action when it became evident again.
I should like to quote from a letter I received on Tuesday from a very experienced textile man in Singapore where, of course, Japanese competition in textiles is very severe. He writes:
We are much concerned as to Government's intentions regarding the import of Japanese textiles this year. Government had been instructed to limit imports from Japan to the 1951 level, that is, to the value of 100 million dollars. In restricting the 1952 imports to the 1951 figures the Government has apparently overlooked the fact that the 1951 imports were the highest on record, and this market received millions of yards more than it could digest.
All the people in the textile industry in that market knew what was going on in 1951, and nothing was done here to stop it. I suggest that this Government will have to tackle this matter, and the sooner the better. It is probably happening in other colonial markets, and I suggest that while we have only certain powers and rights in colonial markets, the Government should impose suitable quotas where proper in certain cases.
This problem was discussed very thoroughly in the middle 1930's. It is probably more serious now than it was then. For that reason I hope that this

Government takes it seriously and tackles it before rather than after the saturation of the markets with these goods.
Now I come to what are, I hope, constructive proposals. I hope that the Government, as far as it can with tact, will take a strong line about the Australian contracts. The whole of the export industries of this country—textile and other industries which rely on exports—have been built up on the basis of the sanctity of contracts and the good word of British merchants. Once we lose that we shall lose a great deal of good will for this country. Similarly, we expect to be dealt with in the same way by others.
I believe that most of the Australian goods now in dispute were sold on firm contracts. If they were sold on firm contracts the buyer in Australia is responsible for them, no matter what his Government do. His Government cannot legally write them off and say the country cannot pay for them. It is just too bad for the Australian importer if he has ordered too much. He must meet his deficit in some way or other. I am sure that if the matter is put fairly to the Australians they will see it in that light. If we lose the sanctity of contract the greater part of our trade will have to pack up.
I should like to say a word about Purchase Tax and the D level, about which we hear so much. I know this can be discussed at a future time, at greater length, and probably much more appropriately; but I hope the President of the Board of Trade will consider this matter most carefully. It deals very hardly with some sides of the textile industry, and there are many anomalies in it.
I will mention just two cases. The price of an all-cotton tapestry to the merchant is 13s. 4½d. and the estimated wholesaler's price, including his margin, is 15s. 7½d. The tax is 6s. 10d., making a total estimated selling price of 22s. 5½d. That, incidentally, is taking the price of cotton at 41d., which I mentioned earlier as being the price quoted by the Cotton Commission. If the maker could buy his cotton direct from New York at 2¼d. lower, the finished article would be about 5½d. less and the Purchase Tax would be 2d. less, because the whole cost would be less. That shows how every little bit should be saved.
Incidentally, if, instead of being all-cotton tapestry 15 per cent. of wool were introduced, it would slightly improve the fabric and it would avoid tax altogether. That is an anomaly which ought not to exist, because the brains of the trade will be absorbed entirely in avoiding tax when they should be producing as cheaply as possible.
In the case of the ordinary 16-inch roller towel cloth, if sold in the piece I am told its tax is about 8d. a yard. If it is made up into 2-yard roller towels the tax is 7s. 8d. per yard, and if it is made up in 2½ yard roller towels it escapes tax altogether. That is one of the many anomalies that I am sure could be ironed out; but I do urge the President of the Board of Trade to look into this matter of Purchase Tax most sympathetically, because it may help the industry very, very much indeed.

2.48 a.m.

Mr. S. Silverman: I have been waiting for many hours to hear someone make an attack upon the Government and Government policy in its relation to the textile trade in the crisis in which it now finds itself. The last attack I heard came from my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle), and it was very refreshing to hear the next attack come from the hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich (Sir J. Barlow).

Mr. Anthony Greenwood: What about my speech?

Mr. Silverman: The speech of the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) was also welcome from my point of view, but perhaps less unexpected than the one we have just heard. I think the hon. Baronet was a little hard on his Government. He seemed to be in conflict with them at many points. He thinks they are wrong about the Liverpool Cotton Exchange; he thinks they are wrong about Japanese competition; wrong about Australia, and about Purchase Tax. I cannot agree with the hon. Baronet on all of them, but I congratulate him on his speech. He may deviate to the right and he may be wrong; but at least he does deviate, and that is something.
I have found the debate extremely depressing, and Lancashire will also find it

extremely depressing. I have heard hon. Members say—not all from one side of the House—that they have derived some sort of comfort from it. The comfort which will be derived from it in my constituency will be cold comfort. In Nelson last week 40 per cent. of the registered working population were unemployed; by the end of this week it will be 45 per cent.; and by the end of a month the figure will be even greater.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: Did my hon. Friend refer to "the registered working population"?

Mr. Silverman: Yes, Sir. My hon. Friend must bear in mind that Nelson is almost entirely a cotton town. There is a little spinning and a little of the other finishing trades. I do not say that the figures apply to Colne, for the position is not quite so bad there, but the president of the weavers' union and the executive members of all the textile unions in the constituency assure me that those are the figures for Nelson.

Mr. Richard Fort: Do those figures include part-time work or are they the wholly unemployed?

Mr. Silverman: They include some part-time work. They include some weavers who are doing some work and earning some wages but not earning enough to deprive them of unemployment benefit. The percentages which I have given are for workers in receipt of unemployment benefit in Nelson last week and the prognostications for the coming weeks.
The hon. Gentleman is right to demand some modification of the picture with which I began. On the other hand, not all the partial unemployment is reflected in the figures. A number of people are partially unemployed but, under the guaranteed wages system, their earnings, even part-time, are sufficient to disentitle them to any unemployment relief for the time being.
A further point—the President of the Board of Trade made it in his speech—is that many of the married women workers who did not elect to join the National Insurance scheme are now unemployed but do not appear in the figures. They are non-registered workers and are in no circumstances entitled to


unemployment pay, and so the employment exchanges do not include them in their returns.
That is a very frightening picture, as everyone will agree. The matter seems to have been approached throughout the debate, with some notable exceptions, in a thoroughly unrealistic way. Everybody has talked about world conditions and the recession in the textile trades as though they were natural disasters and we were dealing with a flood, a tornado, or an earthquake, and all we could do was to organise first-aid relief.
This is not a natural disaster at all. It is something which we have created. When I say "we," I do not mean the present Government or this country alone. These variations in prices, the slumps, booms, or recessions, are things that are within our control if we are prepared to control them. If we are going to bring any comfort to Lancashire workers we must show that we are not merely prepared on a humanitarian basis to patch up their wounds but also prepared to prevent the disaster from occurring.
What has occurred? In 1945 this country was bankrupt. It was internationally insolvent. It could not pay its way in the world at all. We set ourselves to put that right. The thing that we mainly relied upon in those years was the export of cotton textiles. I am not saying for a moment that we relied on that alone, but I do not think it will be contested that without reliance upon the export of textiles from Lancashire we could not have put our international finances on a reasonable balance.

Mr. Nabarro: Surely the hon. Gentleman will concede that the first requirement of this country to contribute to financial equilibrium is the export of coal, which does not involve us in imports, as cotton goods do?

Mr. Silverman: We have not been able to export much coal between 1945 and today. The hon. Gentleman will realise that is so. There is a good deal in the point, but I do not want to be led into what we might have managed to do. I am saying it is cotton, not coal, that restored our financial fortunes between 1945 and 1951. The hon. Gentleman will not contest that.

Mr. Nabarro: I do.

Mr. Silverman: Then the hon. Gentleman finds himself alone in the House. He will alter his view if he pays as much attention to the cotton figures in those years, and studies them with the same understanding as he has already devoted to the coal industry figures.
That policy succeeded because Lancashire, which had suffered so bitterly in the inter-war years, especially from the fact that so many of its towns depended almost entirely upon cotton so that when cotton was depressed there was no living for anyone in the towns, did its patriotic duty. If Lancashire had resisted the appeals made to it by the Labour Government of the day, supported by the Opposition, to devote itself entirely to cotton production we would not have been able to get out of the red in our international finances.

Mr. William Shepherd: What has the hon. Member in mind with regard to exports? What were the export figures, for example, for Lancashire textiles in 1949, and does he realise that the volume of textile exports have never exceeded 40 per cent. of 1937?

Mr. Silverman: If the hon. Member wishes to make that contribution to the debate, I am sure that when his turn comes—and, as we now know this is exempted business, so he has an opportunity—he can make his case. But, without going into figures, I do not think that he contests what I am saying. He only intervened, if I may say so, to put something else to me about which I was not talking.—[Interruption.] I do not think that the hon. Member should be so amused; Lancashire is not amused. What I am saying is that Lancashire accepted the appeal made by all responsible leaders of political and commercial opinion of the day to turn its back on the old memories and to devote itself loyally and patriotically to building up the textile industry; and, had it not done so, we should not have been able to balance our accounts in the international phase.
What I am putting to the House is this. If these towns in Lancashire—those which had suffered most in the inter-war years by being "one-industry"places—had, in fact, resisted the appeals made to them, and had said, "No, we are not going to do that any more, but


we will have some cotton and rebuild some parts of the textile industry, but are never again going to put all our eggs in one basket," nobody in 1945 would have resisted them. Those towns could have had as much diversity of industry as they wished. Nelson could have had as much as anywhere if Nelson had said that was what it was going to have.

Mr. W. G. Bennett: Would the hon. Member have brought the labour from Birmingham and Coventry in order to start these new industries in Lancashire?

Mr. Silverman: In 1945 there was a sellers' market, not merely in cotton, but in a great many other things. There were people going about looking for factories and looking for workers, ready to build new factories in new places; and if these towns of Lancashire, which were one-industry towns, had said, "We will not be one-industry towns any more," they could have diversified their industry then.

Mr. G. B. Drayson: The hon. Gentleman knows my constituency which is adjoining his, and he knows that we tried to start a business in refrigerators there, but his party killed it by Purchase Tax.

Mr. Silverman: What the hon. Member says, and accepting it for the purpose of the argument, and without going into all the inferences he would apparently wish me to draw, is that a new industry went there; but if it did not succeed, that was due to extraneous forces, and it is not a fact that this industry could not be attracted to the area. Constituencies which wished to diversify their industry could have done so at that time. They did not do so. They accepted the appeals made to them, and it is for that reason alone that in my constituency the percentage of unemployed is so high. Apart from the general economic or political questions involved, that fact lays a moral obligation on the Government to see that they do not suffer from the public spirit they showed between 1945 and now.

Mr. Anthony Fell: Why? Why does that place a moral obligation on the Government? There is enough

moral obligation on the Government without anything that may have happened between 1945 and now. The obligation is there to start with.

Mr. Silverman: Then we understand. The hon. Gentleman will go to his constituency, and I invite him to come to mine, and explain to the people unemployed that they need not have been unemployed, that they could have had other industries if they had wanted, that they had only the cotton industry because they yielded to a national appeal, that they are now unemployed through no fault of their own, if you like through no fault of anybody, but that these facts do not impose on the Government any obligation to see that the burden is borne by anybody but the workers.

Mr. Fell: I did not say that.

Mr. Silverman: I cannot give way any more.

Mr. Fell: What I was saying is exactly the opposite: that the moral obligation is there in any case. I cannot understand why the hon. Gentleman has been maintaining so hard all through this long story that this placed some special moral obligation on the Government.

Mr. Silverman: I find it difficult to understand what the hon. Member says. Is he saying there is a moral obligation, or there is not?

Mr. Fell: Of course I am.

Mr. Silverman: Then what is he complaining of? I am saying that there is a moral obligation on the Government to see these people do not suffer, and the hon. Gentleman says there is a moral obligation on the Government to do so, so I do not see why he wants to prolong my speech by numerous interruptions in order to agree with me.

Mr. W. Fletcher: I think I can assist the hon. Gentleman. I think the point is this. Is there a greater moral obligation towards 5,000 people in the cotton industry in a constituency with mixed industry, or towards 50,000 people in a town where there is only one industry? Surely the answer is that the moral obligation is to all people in the cotton industry, whether in a town of mixed industries or not?

Mr. Silverman: I have said nothing which conflicts with that. The greater the suffering the greater the moral obligation. If a whole town is unemployed, there is greater suffering than if 5 per cent. are unemployed. The hon. Member must know what made the House long ago pass special legislation for special areas. It was precisely because the degree of social suffering in a town which is wholly, or almost wholly, unemployed is infinitely greater than the sum of the suffering of the same number of unemployed families spread through communities which are not completely unemployed. We must leave it if the hon. Gentleman does not agree with that. I think he will find that most social students take that view.
Whether it is a greater or a smaller obligation, we all agree that there is an obligation to see that they do not suffer. Let us see what are the consequences of that agreement. Our rates of unemployment benefit are low. [An HON. MEMBER: "Who fixed them?"] They were fixed by the Labour Government. The benefit is much lower now than it was when this Government came into power.
The Government have just announced a Budget which will take £160 million from the food subsidies. In their announcement they agreed that that would add 6s. weekly to the cost of the food for a famliy of four. It is true that the Government also announced certain reliefs in other directions which were intended to compensate for that extra cost. But none of those compensatory reliefs applies to the income of an unemployed man, because he does not pay Income Tax.

Colonel J. H. Harrison: The child allowance for a second child has gone up by 3s.

Mr. Silverman: He is worse off by 3s., is he?

Colonel Harrison: The hon. Member is saying 6s.

Mr. Silverman: Let us agree that, as far as food is concerned, with a family of four he will be 3s. worse off with his basic 26s., which will be worth 23s. None of the palliatives recommended from either side and none of the long-term remedies referred to will do anything to

relieve that suffering. I want to know whether the reward for the successful effort of these people for six years is to be not merely a reduced standard of living but one reduced even below the unemployment benefit standard created in 1945. Is there going to be any kind of special reief, or are they to be left to bear the burden until the Government make up their mind whether the cotton industry can be restored and when?
From purely humanitarian points, I come to general causes. Up to 1951 this effort had succeeded. Some capital has been made out of the Labour Government's placing of certain orders abroad in July, 1951. They were placed abroad because it was deemed urgent to have those orders completed early and the Lancashire mills were so fully occupied, and apparently were going to remain so, that there was no hope of getting early deliveries from them. In 1951 it seemed clear that the hopes of a stable textile trade in Lancashire were still to be relied upon. Everyone has commented on the suddenness with which the deterioration began and the speed at which it progressed.

Air Commodore Harvey: The hon. Member will recall that soon after this Parliament assembled in November, Questions were raised in the House about one order for £50,000 for shirts from Italy, and the Minister replied for two or three weeks in succession that it was placed as late as October because we were morally committed. It was obvious even at that time that the cotton trade was short of work, and we should have put our own people first.

Mr. Silverman: There may be something in that point, but in July, 1951, there seemed no reason to suppose that the crisis, which has now descended so disastrously upon us, was to be feared. What happened? There was a dislocation of financial stability over the world. Reference was made to Korea, but there was nothing in the Korean campaign itself to have any effect, one way or the other, on world trade as a whole. The Korean affair—I use an absolutely neutral word for obvious reasons—was made the legitimate and inevitable occasion in many people's opinion for sudden world-wide re-armament expenditure upon a vast scale.
I hope that no one will pretend that that has had no influence on the situation. I can quite understand those who say that this was something we had to do. It is a perfectly tenable view, and it has had many distinguished advocates on both sides of the House. It is not a view I share, but there were many and weighty arguments which led responsible and intelligent people to that conclusion. If one does come to the conclusion that it is necessary to do this thing, then one has to be honest about it and play fair with the people who are bearing the burden and paying the cost of it. One is treating them very badly indeed if one seeks to pretend that this sudden infusion of immense purchasing power for the purpose of taking materials, labour, and services out of the production of consumer goods into other goods, had no impact at all on international financial and economic arrangements.
It plainly is not so. It is something we could have avoided if we had taken a different view. There is no doubt that this attempt to spend so much more money—not merely in this country but everywhere in the world—has had the most disastrous effect on the balance of international trade in every country in which the attempt has been made. It is not to be supposed for a moment that the textile crisis is only a textile crisis. It is clearly part of a general trade crisis largely occasioned—I would say wholly occasioned—by the distortion of the whole international financial machine by the attempt to spend more money than one has on goods that were not there.
The whole effect has been to destroy the financial stability of the Western world, at any rate, in order to get increased armaments which in fact it could not produce. The result was merely to get less armaments for more money. I am not arguing that in relation to the problem we are discussing. I am saying this was the first and most important cause of the distortion of world finance that has produced general insolvency almost throughout the world. At that moment a number of other different things were happening, because obviously the first result of worsened conditions is that one is less favourably placed in one's customary and traditional markets.
Our old trade competitors in Japan and Germany were rebuilding their industries so that at the moment when our own position was being adversely affected by financial changes due to world-wide rearmament, we were getting increased competition in the markets we had been able to establish, or re-establish, since 1945. This, at any rate, could have been minimised by wiser political handling. No one suggests for a moment that the Japanese ought to be prevented from earning their living because if they do it somehow interferes with the people of Lancashire earning their living. But Japan had on her doorstep a vast market in China, and we allowed ourselves to become parties to a political settlement in the Far East which had the effect of depriving Japan of this natural market in China.
This is not merely politics, because if we go back on a treaty between the de facto Government in Japan and the de facto Government in China all sorts of consequences flow from it. If we do not have a treaty of peace and the Governments do not recognise one another, we can have no commercial understanding, no trade, no consular offices, no banking or credit facilities and no port or shipping arrangements. And the consequences of having no political settlement with Japan and the de facto Government of China is that virtually we bar Japan from her natural market in China and virtually invite them to compete with us in our own markets when that need not have happened at all.

Mr. Holt: The hon. Member brought up this point about a fortnight ago. Before the war Japan could sell her goods to China and still there was this Japanese competition with the rest of the world. I agree that Japan has to live, but I do not feel that is arguable on this point.

Mr. Silverman: The hon. Member did me the honour on the occasion to which he refers to intervene in my speech to say the same thing as he has just said, and I will give him the same answer. The fact remains that whatever the situation was before the war, if in the present state of the world there is no political understanding, no political settlement, between Japan today and China today, then there can be no Japanese-Chinese trade today. If this vast Chinese market were open to


Japan today, is there any hon. Member of this House who does not think that would be an ameliorating factor in the Japanese competition in the markets of this country about which everybody complains?

Mr. Holt: They would increase production.

Mr. Silverman: All right, let them increase production. There are plenty of people in the world today waiting to wear clothes. Hon. Members must bear in mind that if we believe the author of that remarkable book "The Geography of Hunger"—and I see no reason why we should not—of every three people who die in the world one dies of hunger, and their clothing is not much better than their food. There is no reason to be afraid that the world cannot absorb, if proper arrangements are made, all that the industries of the world can produce. There is no reason why we should fear each of these countries building up their own textile trade. There is plenty of room in the world for the production of all of us for at least more generations than we need bother about tonight.
That is one thing, but there are certain other consequences. Here we have one thing, a disastrous political arrangement, on which ultimately we were double-crossed by the United States, about the recognition of Governments. One result of it was to keep Japan out of her natural markets and force her to compete with us in other markets where competition need not have happened. But there is something else. Until 1920 Lancashire herself had a valuable Chinese market which the Japanese were able to get from us in the years that followed. One would have thought that one compensating advantage of the disasters of a foolish political settlement in the Far East would have been to give us an opportunity of recapturing that Chinese market. But we did not try.
Although we have recognised the Chinese Government we still hold them at arm's length, and no attempt has been made so far to win back for Lancashire the Chinese market out of which the Japanese have been kept by political arrangements to which we were party.

Air Commodore Harvey: The hon. Member must know that British traders in places like Shanghai have been quite

unable to carry on. The other day we read of Mr. Robin Gordon of Jardine, Matheson, who was locked up because he was not able to pay the wages bill. They have made every effort to trade and credit should be given to them.

Mr. Silverman: The hon. and gallant Member knows more about these matters than I do, and I appreciate that. I think he will agree with me—he is always fair-minded in matters of this kind—that the British trading community of Shanghai and Hong Kong have been by no means so pleased with the development of British-Chinese relations in the last year or so. I think they would agree with what I was saying when the hon. and gallant Member interrupted me, and I think he knows they would agree. There is a vast market waiting for us in China if we only removed political inhibitions.

Mr. Gilbert Longden: I am sure the hon. Member will allow me to interrupt him. After all, the whole night is before us. I really must ask him in all fairness to say what more he would do to persuade the Chinese Government? What more can we do than we have done?

Mr. Silverman: One thing I would do, and I only mention one thing now and do not want to debate it; whether anybody else liked it or not, I would back up the right of the actual Government of China to take their place among the rest of the United Nations.

Mr. Longden: Would the hon. Member really do that when the Chinese are shooting our troops in Korea?

Mr. Silverman: We are shooting their troops, too. It seems to me that ever since September, 1950, the war in Korea has gone on only because the United States of America takes a different view about this matter of Chinese membership of the United Nations than we take. Only the other day an American statesman was saying that the Chiang Kai-shek handful in Formosa was an ally of America—and we are an ally of America everywhere in the world. I say that with suitable political conditions—the political conditions that would be a natural and logical consequence of our having recognised the Government in China—there would be a vast Chinese market ready for us to enter.
It does not only stop there. There are two ways of relieving competition in restricted world markets. There is the whole of Europe. I have heard hon. Members and the President of the Board of Trade himself say that we must carry on the old adventurous spirit and send out our people to find new markets. Would he tell me, at some time during the debate, what in the world the Lancashire commercial traveller is to do about the Battle Act? Where does he go to find these new markets? He could go behind the Iron Curtain. He might like to go to Czechoslovakia; or to the Balkan countries; the Baltic countries; or to the Soviet Union. But he cannot, because politics again have dropped a curtain between East and West Europe, from which both East and West Europe are suffering.
How in the world can Europe recover its financial and commercial stability if it remains permanently divided? This has nothing to do with ideology; it has nothing to do with politics, and it has nothing to do with religion.

Mr. Holt: And it has nothing to do with textiles.

Mr. Silverman: It has a tremendous lot to do with textiles. If we have a lot of textiles to sell and they have a lot of timber to sell, is it not stupid that we should not be able to exchange our disposable surpluses with the disposable surpluses of others? It may well be that it is not possible to do a deal. It may be that it would be resisted, or that the terms offered would be too harsh, or that the mode of payment or the security of payment would be unsatisfactory. All those things are possible. But we know nothing about them if we begin by saying that we will not trade at all because of some political dispute. That is what the Battle Act said.

Mr. Fitzroy Maclean: I should like to ask the hon. Gentleman, in relation to China, if it is not a fact that it has been the declared policy of the present Chinese Government, long before the Korean war started, not to trade but to be self-supporting—or if they did trade, to trade with the Soviet Union and not with Western Europe.

Mr. Harold Davies: Nonsense!

Mr. Silverman: I say "No."

Mr. Maclean: It is no use saying "No."

Mr. Silverman: If the hon. Gentleman says it is no use my saying "No" it means that he is not interested in my answer, and if he is not interested in my answer I fail to understand why he asked the question. In my opinion, what he is saying is not so.

Mr. Maclean: The hon. Member should have read their statement of policy.

Mr. Silverman: If the hon. Gentleman will do me the courtesy of trying to follow what I am trying to say, he will realise that I left the subject of China a few minutes ago. Quite clearly, if anything is to be done to restore Lancashire's trade it can only be by either winning back markets which we have lost, finding new markets, or relieving ourselves of competition in existing markets.
I should have thought that this was precisely the kind of thing that the British Traders Research Organisation was intended to do. If that organisation were still in existence one would have thought that this was the very moment when it might have been applying its resources to a research into where markets might be made available.
But this is the moment which the President of the Board of Trade has chosen for liquidating the organisation. It does not make sense. The organisation cannot have cost the Government very much. The President of the Board of Trade talks about sending commercial travellers all over the world looking for markets, but that will cost something. Yet he chooses this moment for disbanding that organisation.
With an opportunity offered to us to investigate the possibilities of East-West European trade, one would have thought that the Government would have encouraged those possibilities instead of frowning upon them and discouraging people from investigating them. A delegation has been at Geneva discussing the possibilities, and now there is to be an economic conference in Moscow.
Some hon. Members opposite wanted to go to the Moscow conference. I believe one has decided to go. One put


down a Question to the Foreign Secretary. Instead of being encouraged to go and make such investigations on the spot as were possible, he was frowned upon and told that it was not in the public interest for him to go even to look. That was bad advice.
I have accepted an invitation to go, and I shall go. I cannot see that the textile trade will have lost anything if I come back with empty hands. [An HON. MEMBER: "Does the hon. Member propose to wear the shoulder badge"?] I beg hon. Members opposite not to mix up their policies with their prejudices. If they are really anxious to preserve the peace of the world, they should take every opportunity of patching up differences, removing mutual fears and rebuilding the world markets, and the world markets include the European markets.
If hon. Members opposite are not prepared to do that because of their political prejudices or for any other reason, it is idle for them to sit through the long hours of the night weeping crocodile tears over the sufferings of the Lancashire textile trade.

3.43 a.m.

Mr. Julian Amery: The newspapers have recently told us that the students of Sfax University have solemnly declared that until Tunisia is liberated they will stay in bed. We appear to have pursued the opposite policy tonight and to have resolved to stay out of bed until we have discussed the matter before us as fully as we can. That is a more robust attitude. I can only hope that it will prove more effective, but I am not convinced of that.
We have had some extremely well-informed analyses of the crisis, but I have not derived any very clear idea of what we are going to do about it. The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) developed an argument which had the great merit of being logical. He said—and it is true—that the world re-armament programme had had an influence on the slump in the textile trade. He also told us, equally truly, that the fact that Japan and Germany are cut off from their natural markets does sharpen their competition against us. There is no denying this, but what the hon. Gentleman is really saying is that if you have

less guns you can have more butter. But we have discussed all this before and a great majority of us on both sides of the House have come to the decision that we have got to have guns. We have got to get the guns if we are to have security at all, and in the long run security is more important than well-being.
The hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) and the President of the Board of Trade very rightly said that, however long this particular crisis may last, the textile industry, and more particularly the cotton industry, is going to be faced with a grievous long-term problem arising first of all from growing foreign competition, and secondly from the fact that so many countries which did not manufacture textiles in the past are doing so now. We used to take refuge in the idea that high quality assured us a market. To some extent it still will, but there is no doubt, or so I am told by well-informed people, that the Japanese mills are already producing high-quality goods, and with the backing of American dollars it is not surprising. In these circumstances we must safeguard our markets as much as possible, and first of all our markets in the Commonwealth and Empire.
For 50 years or more British textile exports to the Commonwealth have enjoyed an extensive measure of imperial preference. That was strengthened in the 1930's by the introduction of quotas on a preferential basis in the West Indies and West Africa. This preferential treatment has been going on for so long that it is difficult to say exactly how valuable it has been to the textile trade. But we have been able to see that in those territories where we do not receive preference—the Congo Basin Treaty territories—we were not able to hold our own at all in the years between the wars, while we were able to hold our own in those other markets in the Commonwealth and Empire where preference was enjoyed.
I agree with what was said earlier by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale), and I think that the Government should consider fairly soon whether something can be done to reshape our obligations under the Congo Basin Treaty. I believe an opportunity may arise quite soon. It may arise if the proposal for Central African Federation materialises. The status, at any rate, of Nyasaland and part of Northern Rhodesia would then


be modified, and there might be an opportunity of exempting them from the provisions of the treaty which prohibits them from granting preferences.
Since the war there has been a more important change in the incidence of Imperial Preference upon British textile exports. That is the result of the agreement signed with Pakistan last April. Under this agreement the preference fell from 45 per cent. to 5 per cent. and the consequences have been really disastrous. In 1950, the year before the agreement was signed, we sold 67 million square yards of cotton to Pakistan. In the following year, up to a month or two ago, we have only sold 39 million square yards.
In the same time, Japanese exports doubled to 198 million square yards. They now sell 90 per cent. of the total rayon consumed in Pakistan, and we used to sell rather more than half. Meanwhile, Italy has ousted us from the position of being the chief suppliers of cotton yarn to Pakistan. We ought to look into these figures.
The House will be familiar with the events leading up to the treaty with Pakistan, and it will remember that when India was united, we received preference levels in India equal in value, more or less, to those India received in the markets here. That gave, roughly speaking, an equal advantage to both sides. But, when India was partitioned and Pakistan had been created, it turned out that we had about four times as much advantage in the Pakistan market as they had in ours. One cannot blame Pakistan for regarding this as unfair.
Had it not been for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, however, we could have got round the table with the representatives of Pakistan and said, "If you will keep the preference margins more or less where they are, we will extend new preferences to you if you ask." But, because of this unfortunate G.A.T.T. agreement, we were precluded from doing that, and Pakistan, therefore, had no alternative to depriving us of our preferences, with the disastrous consequences I have mentioned.
The simple conclusion which I draw from all this is to ask the President to consider very seriously whether the time

has not come when we should take the action necessary to free ourselves from the G.A.T.T., or at least from those provisions of it which preclude us from increasing the preferential margins we can give to other parts of the Commonwealth and Empire. We have only to give 60 days' notice of our intention, and if we say we are going to give that notice, I believe we would give new hope to Lancashire and confidence that something is really being done to safeguard markets we already have, and to secure new ones.

Mr. Hale: I find the hon. Member's argument an impressive one, but I would remind him that the present figures show that the exports of India are greater than those of Britain and Japan together.

Mr. Amery: I do not pretend that this action would solve all our problems, but would prevent the kind of disaster we have suffered in Pakistan.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House, and particularly on the other side, have said that we ought to have a Commonwealth conference now on this subject of the textile trade; but I put it to those hon. Members, and to the President of the Board of Trade, that if we have a Commonwealth conference now it will be a conference which will analyse problems but will not come to conclusions. But if the President of the Board of Trade, on behalf of the Government, would denounce these provisions of the G.A.T.T. to which I have referred—denounce this treaty which ties our hands at present—then we should call a Commonwealth conference and say, "We are now in a position to give you these increased margins of preference," and then we could also ask, "What can you do for us?"
I suggest there would be new hope of saving our markets on these lines. It seems to me that that would be a constructive policy, and I ask the President of the Board of Trade to ask his colleagues in the Government to consider whether action could not be taken upon it in the near future.

3.55 a.m.

Mr. Ronald Williams: I hope that the hon. Member for Preston, North (Mr. Amery) will not think me discourteous if I do not follow him in his argument. I want to develop an argument which has been passing through my


mind, and if I were to do this and also reply to the hon. Gentleman the House might think perhaps that I was taking too long. My constituency suffered as much as any during the years between the wars, and although it seemed as if confidence had returned completely, it is a fact that large numbers of workers now feel the gravest anxiety about the position in the textile industries.
I would feel more confidence in the future if that anxiety were shared by Her Majesty's Ministers. During this debate I have had a feeling that they are by no means satisfied that the position is as desperately serious and urgent as it is. The speech of the President of the Board of Trade today was directed to showing reasons why the Government should not be regarded as having responsibility in this matter, and I was puzzled for some time as to why this should be so. Obviously, as individuals, hon. Members on the other side appeared to be very sympathetic when they were talking about unemployment.
I came to the conclusion at last that we were speaking different languages; that we on this side were hypersensitive about unemployment because it means so much more to us than it does to the party opposite, and that there is a deep cleavage between the parties on this issue. I do not make that statement without having gone into some detail as to the reasons on which I base that observation.
The difference between the parties is to be found chiefly in this: we on this side are pledged to full employment, and we recognise that there are some difficulties of great intricacy which flow from our acceptance of that principle. The party opposite are not so pledged. They do not believe in full employment. They have clearly stated so on many occasions, and recently and clearly in the debate on manpower and productivity. We on this side have suffered many jibes on many occasions from hon. Members opposite, and we have been jeered at in the Press, because of our belief in full employment, and we have been criticised in many learned journals.
It has been said that if we have full employment we have incipient inflation as its consequence, that we are asking for disaster if we persist in that policy of full employment, and that the only way

out of it is to have a pool of unemployment. There are many economists of some standing who have taken that point of view, and pressed it, repeatedly. So far as the party opposite is concerned, even when we attempt to give them credit for believing in it, they demur. One of its most distinguished Ministers is a lawyer of great experience, a person whom I say, frankly, I respect so far as his legal qualifications are concerned, and to whom I offer tribute as a person and on the impecoable way he expresses himself in this House. I am referring to the Minister of Labour.
No one more authoritative can be discovered if one is to find out what is the attitude of the Conservative Government in relation to this question of full employment. I want to make it clear that I am not making any attack upon him. His words are clear. I will quote them. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens) had given the Minister of Labour credit for believing in full employment, and had said so. The Minister said:
He,"—
that is, my right hon. Friend the Member for Blyth—
also did me the justice of saying that he was sure I was in favour of a policy of full employment. I want to see a high and stable level of employment. That is my aim, and within that policy to achieve the other objects which we are going to discuss."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd March, 1952, Vol. 497, c. 53.]
Now there is a world of difference between full employment and a high and stable level of employment.

Mr. Fell: The difference here is one of real honesty. It depends surely upon what the hon. Gentleman means by full employment. If he means by this complete and absolutely full employment that, of course, is a palpable absurdity, because that has never happened, and never will happen. If, on the other hand, he means the absolutely true and only attainable object, he must use the words, "a high and stable level of employment" because those are the honest ones.

Mr. Williams: The suggestion made in the intervention is that there is some dishonesty by someone regarding the use of these terms. Let me say immediately that I do not for one moment suggest that there is any dishonesty on the part of the Minister of Labour, for the term


was used with precision, and, unlike the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken, the Minister of Labour really appreciates the difference between full employment and a high and stable level of employment. He so distinguishes in the words I have quoted.
When we talk about full employment, we mean the type of attainable full employment that involves the controls and the policy which hon. Members opposite criticised for so many years and which so-called orthodox economists have criticised in their journals. The type of full employment we mean is that which, we acknowledge, keeps us on the brink of incipient inflation. The high and stable level of employment of the party opposite would allow for 8 per cent. unemployment.

Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing: The hon. Gentleman is trying to make a difference where none exists. "High and stable level of employment" is the phraseology of the White Paper on Full Employment, which was signed by the present Leader of the Opposition and the ex Lord President of the Council. It was a coalition matter, and I do not see why the hon. Gentleman tries to make capital out of it.

Mr. Williams: I am indebted for that courteous intervention. There need be no misunderstanding about this point, for the term was used in the White Paper.
It is clear that certain people had in mind a level of unemployment of about 8 per cent. I am not saying that the Conservative Party have indicated that they would like that level of unemployment. I should be delighted to hear from any member of the Conservative Party what he does mean by a high and stable level of employment, because nobody could be more shy about anything than they are about that. They always say that the term was used in the White Paper and that other people signed it. But I have found that our term "full employment" is frequently understood by members of the Conservative Party as over-full employment—a disgraceful, disgusting term that we have heard in this House on many occasions, always from members of the Conservative Party.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. Henry Strauss): I do not know if the hon. Gentleman was in the House from 1946 onwards. If he was, he may remember that I pointed out on more than one occasion that the first public man to use the phrase "over-full employment" was the Foreign Secretary of the Labour Government, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison), then Lord President of the Council, at a Press conference in August, 1947.

Mr. Williams: If the House feel that I should withdraw, I must say that I was speaking within my experience during my period in this House—a short period, but it extends over the past four years. I say that, whatever the origin of the term may be, I have heard it in this House on many occasions and never from anyone but a member of the party opposite.

Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing: As the hon. Gentleman has made an allegation, could he quote, giving, perhaps, some reference to HANSARD? He appears to be under a misapprehension. I never heard the term, except in the context stated in the intervention by my hon. and learned Friend the Parliamentary Secretary.

Mr. Williams: I am in the recollection of my colleagues. I can only state that it is within my recollection that the term has been used on many occasions here and always by members of the Conservative Party.

Mr. Anthony Greenwood: It was used by Lord Woolton.

Mr. Strauss: It is perfectly true that it was used by Lord Woolton some weeks after it was used by the then Lord President of the Council. They both meant exactly the same thing by it and it was quite justifiable. I asked the present Leader of the Opposition who was then Prime Minister—because I did not want there to be a misunderstanding—whether this statement of the then Lord President represented the policy of what was then His Majesty's Government, and the answer was "Yes." I will not quote the exact answer but he said it had a context. I had no quarrel with it.
Exactly the same use was made by the Lord President and by Lord Woolton of that phrase. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr.


Dalton) made exactly the same use of Lord Woolton's phrase as the hon. Member is now making. He asked what Lord Woolton meant. I at once wrote to "The Times" asking why the right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland put that question to Lord Woolton and not to his right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council, who had used it to describe his Government's view some weeks earlier.

Mr. Williams: I am most indebted to the hon. and learned Gentleman for his observations. They do not detract in the slightest from the substance of my submission, which is that there is a substantial cleavage of opinion between the party opposite and the party on this side about our ideas concerning full employment. There is, therefore, greater anxiety on this side of the House in relation to unemployment than there is on the other. May I make this clear? Nobody on this side would have taken the same view as did the President of the Board of Trade concerning the 5 per cent. level of unemployment in the textile industry. The situation in the industry today is an economic crisis—

Sir Herbert Williams: Who started it?

Mr. Williams: —and will become an economic catastrophe if matters are not dealt with vigorously and diligently by Her Majesty's Government. If I am wrong, and if the Parliamentary Secretary can assure me that Her Majesty's Government are as anxious as anybody about the situation in the textile industry, nobody will be more pleased to report the matter to my constituents than myself.
Up to the present I have had a contrary opinion, an impression from speeches opposite and from what was said by the President, that a certain part of these great industries are expendable, which, for reasons for which the Government are not in any way to blame, must go because they cannot stand up to the changed conditions in the commercial world.
That may be the correct view, but if it is, let the Government not conceal it. Let the Government clearly state that we shall be obliged in this country to carry on in future with very much smaller textile industries. If they say that, they

could bring hope where there is now despair, because of the uncertainty of the present position.
At present the impression is given that the Government do not care; that they are going to leave the textile industries to their own devices and that they will not intervene. Consider what the President of the Board of Trade said today. He might have felt that we were holding this Government responsible for all the troubles which have come on the textile industries. I repudiate that view completely; I do not for one moment assert that that is so.
There is, however, a field of Government responsibility in relation to every one of the points to which the President referred, and my complaint is that he did not give us the slightest idea of what the Government were going to do about it For instance, he talked about worldwide decline. Nobody in his senses would say that this Government is responsible for the world-wide decline. But surely the Government itself should say that, in face of a world-wide decline, they have certain responsibilities; that they do not take any blame upon themselves for the position, but they feel that in relation to these industries they have a certain job to do.
But the whole attitude of the President was clearly to the effect, "How can you blame us for a world-wide decline? That is something for which no Government is responsible." From that point on we had no statement about what the Government was proposing to do. It does hearten me a little to realise that there are critics on that question actually on the Government side of the House. In the course of the debate there have been many suggestions that the Government should do this or that. It would have been a much happier state of affairs if those proposals and suggestions had come from the President himself, indicating that the Government were occupied about this matter.
Then the President spoke of the buyers' market, his second point, as if, because there was a buyers' market, and because we had to leave so many things to the industries themselves, the Government had no responsibility. If the Government are turning their back upon the industries, let them say so quite clearly. If, in fact, they accept responsibility let


them please define the area of that responsibility and give some message of hope to people who are despairing at the present time.
Then we come to the third and fourth points, the problems of competitive efficiency and increase in unemployment. There, again, I ask the House to note that we did not have from the President any indication of what the Government is prepared to do. Not the slightest idea was given as to whether they had any policy at all. In fact, the position was so unsatisfactory that one of my hon. Friends suggested that the Government might be deliberately causing unemployment. While I dissent from that view, I accept that it does look very much like that.
Unless firm assurances are given from the Government Front Bench, the impression can easily be given that it would be most convenient if a certain part of these industries were destroyed and the people transferred to other industries. If that is their view, if it is part of their policy that, because of the difficulties we are running into in the world markets, it is better that part of the industries should be destroyed, the Government should say so. Whatever the consequences of their pronouncement might be, it would be honest.
The Australian cuts followed the conference of the Finance Ministers. We are left in as much doubt as ever, after the observations of the President, as to whether they did discuss the effect on the textile industries.
Personally, I acquit them of the suggestion that they did not discuss it. I do not think that such an important conference could have been held without their having any discussion at all. If, in fact, they did not have any discussions, if they entered that conference convinced that the textile industries did not really matter and they could turn their back upon them and need not discuss them at all, then this Government would be completely discredited and not fit to hold office a moment longer.
But if they did discuss the effect on the textile industries then surely, having discussed it, they would have made some pronouncement. It would not have come as such a surprise to them when the cuts occurred. When they did occur, we had

a statement in the House concerning the sovereignty of the nations in the Commonwealth. Surely there is a clear inconsistency between the concept of sovereignty in that context and the degree of co-operation which it was suggested had existed in the conference.
If this is the degree of co-operation—I say nothing about the pressures the Australian Government were under—which exists at the present time, then the idea of that sort of co-operation is a mere sham and a disgrace. In the meantime, here is one of our greatest industries which is dying while the Government are doing nothing whatsoever about it. Apparently they have no policy in relation to this industry. If they have a policy, then in heaven's name, since the President of the Board of Trade himself has said nothing about that policy, the Parliamentary Secretary might fill the breach by telling us, in his reply, whether the Government have any views on this matter at all.

4.22 a.m.

Mr. Richard Fort: The horn Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams) has an agreeable manner which belies the political platform "facts" which he tries to put over. He knows that the reference to the Government wishing to see 8 per cent. unemployment is based upon a complete untruth. The figure of 8 per cent. was taken by the Government Actuary as an assumption when working out certain figures in connection with unemployment insurance and when discussing insurance and full employment.

Mr. S. Silverman: Would the hon. Member explain to the House why, if "a high and stable level of employment means" exactly the same thing as "full employment," the party opposite did not say simply "full employment" instead of using this other long and cumbrous phrase?

Mr. Fort: Because, as the hon. Member very well understands, neither at this time nor in the time of any Government has every single person who could be working in this country been working. It is dishonest to mislead people with a jargon expression and to use "full employment" when all that any Government has achieved is a high and stable level of employment.

Mr. H. Strauss: Is my hon. Friend aware that this much discussed phrase "a high and stable level of employment" was not only used in the Coalition White Paper but was used in the White Paper on the distribution of industry published by the Socialist Government in 1948?

Mr. Fort: I am very grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for that additional information.
The moving peroration which the hon. Member for Wigan delivered when he said the Government had not defined the areas of responsibility in connection with the textile industry surely meant that he has not given much thought or study to what my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade said in his opening speech in this debate. Clear areas of responsibility were laid down. Decisions were made about import licences being discontinued, quota arrangements being made with the Colonies and also the policy of diversification in the textile areas.
I think that what we have been able to put before the Government from both sides of the House have been additional points to which the Government might well turn their attention. One of the difficulties in the whole of this discussion has been that unemployment varies tremendously from place to place. In one of my own townships it reaches the same level as in Nelson and Colne, the division which the hon. Gentleman opposite represents. In another—about six miles away—there are just about 100 unemployed, which is about the same figure as that for the last two, or three years.

Mr. Hale: Do I understand that the hon. Gentleman is now saying that the meaning of "a high and stable level of employment," in political propaganda, is virtually the same as "full employment," meaning thereby nearly full employment, and something like total employment? In Oldham at present there are 33 per cent. unemployed in the textile industry. Is the hon. Gentleman now saying to the House that if that misery is spread over the country and averaged out, it does not matter very much? If he is saying that there is a serious situation? Is he also saying that the Government meant what they said and are going to do something about it—and if so, what?

Mr. Fort: I say that there is a desperately serious situation in one of my townships and there is a situation which has remained the same for the last three or four years in another one. That is the problem we have throughout Lancashire. It is desperate in some places and it is less so in others.
Let us turn to some of the causes and some of the remedies which the Government have put forward and others which have added to the list during this debate. Undoubtedly, we must turn our attention to exports. It is exports which have dried up, not only from this country but from all other exporting countries in the world. This, unfortunately, has been part of a long-term trend, as other countries have put in their own manufacturing equipment. I think there is no doubt about the truth of the suggestions of the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Rhodes), who has such an extensive knowledge of the textile industry generally, that we must hold on to what we have, using all the bargaining weapons which the Government and the industry possess.
We must not allow a single yard of cloth to be lost, wherever we can get that by fair trading and by firm negotiation. As part of that fair trading and firm negotiation, the proposals which my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, North (Mr. Amery) put forward about the use of preferences and the repudiation, if needs be, of G.A.T.T. ought to be considered by the Government.
There are other points to which the Government can certainly turn their minds. One of these has been the importation of grey cloth for finishing in this country. As I add up the figures, there have been imported here for finishing something over 1,000 million yards between 1948 and 1951. They were imports, as hon. Gentlemen opposite know, which were arranged under the Socialist Government as part of the Socialist planning for the textile industry.

Mr. Burke: Does the hon. Gentleman remember that when these goods were imported it was necessary to get supplies from abroad, and that every loom at home was full of warps and we could not make them ourselves?

Mr. Fort: Perhaps I may continue before the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr.


Burke) becomes too excited on this score.
I object not necessarily to the amount imported but to the relatively small quantities re-exported. Of over 1,000 million square yards in three years, only about 580 million have been re-exported. I shall be glad if my hon. and learned Friend can tell me, when he replies to the debate, what has happened to the over 400 million square yards which have apparently been absorbed in this market.
It was all very well importing Japanese, and also in later years, large quantities of Indian grey cloth for finishing and re-exporting to the low-cost colonial market, for which there might have been an argument, but nearly half the quantity has apparently not been exported, and that needs to be explained to the House and to the industry.
The other imports which have greatly concerned hon. Members and need explaining are the very large imports for re-armament purposes. The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) says that they were made to meet the needlessly rapid demand for rearmament in this country. I do not want to enter into a political argument with him, but why could not the late Government, when placing contracts, have placed the huge quantity of over 100 million square yards—which it could not get English manuafacturers to accept—in smaller quantities with properly negotiated break clauses instead of loading up the market so that delivery will not be completed until well past the middle of this year?

Mr. S. Silverman: Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that the argument against that—which I do not accept—was that the whole thing was so urgent that it was not possible to wait? If the hon. Gentleman is now saying that that is not a good argument and that it was possible to wait, would he apply that argument only to cotton or does he think it valid for any other aspect of the rearmament programme? If he thinks the latter, he is in the same danger as his colleague who spoke hours ago of finding himself joining the group led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan).

Mr. Fort: With his characteristic beguilement, the hon. Member has tried to make me say what I did not say.
I did not criticise the Government for placing re-armament orders at the time that they did, because no doubt English manufacturers could not accept them. I did criticise them for placing re-armament orders abroad in the quantities and for the length of time that they did and for not arranging, in accordance with normal commercial practice, break clauses, with compensation if need be, to make provision for eventualities which they could not then perceive.

Mr. Silverman: How does that differ from what I said?

Mr. Fort: The hon. Member was trying to imply that I said that the Government should not have placed orders abroad.

Mr. Silverman: I am sorry if I did not make myself clear. I thought that the hon. Gentleman's argument was that it would have been possible to arrange these matters in such a way as to enable all or some part of these contracts ultimately to be fulfilled by English manufacturers. That could only have been done if all or part of the deliveries had been delayed. His argument concedes that some delay was possible. If some delay was possible for that, why not for other aspects of the re-armament programme?

Mr. Fort: Deliveries under contracts are apparently being delayed at least into the second half of the year in any case.

Mr. Hale: The hon. Gentleman is running away from the argument.

Mr. Fort: I am certainly not running away, but I am not going to be enticed into discussing the matter in other fields.

Mr. J. Edwards: The hon. Gentleman does not seem to have listened to the President of the Board of Trade. The right hon. Gentleman made a perfectly fair statemeut about this, to which I took no exception. He made it plain that the circumstances were such that the programme of our defence requirements could not be met if we had not placed these contracts where we did.

Mr. Fort: If the hon. Gentleman has put the correct interpretation on my right hon. Friend's argument. I still find


it difficult to understand in view of the fact that delivery is certainly not being completed until August at the earliest, and some are later still.

Mr. Silverman: But that failure to deliver on the arranged dates is not confined to these contracts. It is true of every single item in the whole of the re-armament programme.

Mr. Fort: We are discussing textiles now, and not other items.
On the subject of trade negotiations much has been said about Australia, and I am not going to add anything, but more might be said about Argentina. In the last trade agreement negotiated the Argentinians undertook to grant licences for British textiles up to £4 million. I understand that in fact they have not granted licences for more than £1 million. In the meantime, we have been paying them large sums of money for their meat. They have been spending that money on textiles from Brazil, Italy, France and Germany. I would ask the Government, when they come to negotiate the next trade agreement this summer, to take a very tough line about getting Argentina to use the sterling to buy textiles from us instead of other European countries, whatever they may do about their neighbour Brazil.
Long-term improvement of employment in Lancashire falls into two parts. First, all possible assistance should be given to the building of plants to develop new textiles whether improvements of the different types of rayon, or the new fibres such as nylon "terelene" and others still being developed. The highest priority should be given to these development because the future of the British textile industry depends on bringing out new cloths and the use of these new fibres. To maintain our position both in the home market and in exports we must lead development in the world in these new fibres.
For all that the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne said, the previous Government did not encourage diversification of industry in East Lancashire. They seemed to take too much notice of what employers and some on the union side said about the need to keep new industries away in order to retain the workers

in the textile industry during the boom days of the late 1940's.
I must say that I fell for the policy myself; but few said that it was unwise at the time, and experience since has shown how unwise we were to put all our eggs in the one basket. If we had shown wisdom, more industries would have gone there. The operatives then would have known that there was alternative employment, and might have felt that they could more easily accept the idea of redeployment and the adoption of new ideas without the risk of working themselves out of the only work or almost the only work that there is now in the district. Another aspect of diversification is that there would have been a stimulation of new ideas all through the district.
I am quite sure that, even at this late hour, it would be to the benefit of East Lancashire if a great amount of drive was put into the bringing of new industries to that part. If the Government, or if industrialists, want advice or information, we have not only the excellent voluntary organisation which is known to many hon. Members on both sides, and to which some belong. The local authorities are also working together to give information about facilities available, and when the Parliamentary Secretary winds up the debate, I hope he will express, with all the warmth he can, the acceptance of the idea that we must see new industries and further diversification in East Lancashire.

4.42 a.m.

Mr. William Ross: Having been here ever since the start of the debate, I do not think I can offer much which will be new, but I will contribute a new accent; because, if I have any comment to make about the debate, it is that it has been very parochial. I want, geographically at least, to extend the scope of the debate.
Some people think that Scotland provides only spirits, ships and scenery. But, there are no fewer than a hundred thousand people whose wellbeing is tied up with this very industry which we have been discussing all day. In my constituency of Kilmarnock and area, in Ayr to the south, and in Central Ayrshire, we are already feeling the cold draught of unemployment that we used to look back on with a shudder, having experienced it before.
The President of the Board of Trade cannot be very proud of his performance today. He gave a very placid, and rather ponderous review of facts; a nice historical survey, but there was no attempt properly to analyse the difficulties of industry. There was certainly no solution propounded in his speech. We got the usual pronouncements and exhortations and nothing else. If in Lancashire, Paisley, Kilmarnock, Glasgow, people were hoping for anything from him they certainly did not get it.
In the debate some strange suggestions have been made. This matter of the diversification of industry: is it practical at this stage, with this Government, with the pronouncements which we have had on credit policy and building policy, to suggest new factories as a possible way out? In any case, it contains the seed of the despair which we have been suspecting, that the battle for the textile industry is already lost, and that the Government have accepted it as lost.
The hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) made one of the most significant remarks in the debate, but unfortunately he did not follow it up. In one of those rare flashes of insight which occasionally illuminate the gloom in which he revels he said that what we were facing was a crisis in the world capitalist system. We have had talk about a world wide recession in textiles, the Australian cuts and so forth.
Why was there a recession? It was due to the complete lack of confidence of traders, manufacturers and of the woman standing in the shop hoping to get goods at the right price. It was the lack of confidence in the future of industry created by the panic that raised the cost of raw materials of the textile trade to such fantastic heights.
Hon. Members opposite do not like price control. But what was needed was not just price control in the home market, but price control in international markets, and a joint buying policy. It was something we should have looked for from countries that were supposed to be co-operating militarily. The same co-operation economically would have prevented that fantastic rise that has bedevilled the textile industry ever since. I can see no hope of international action in the speech of the President of the

Board of Trade. He does not seem to think the problem arises at all. But it is the first problem, and until we get that price stability and that return of confidence, with justice to everyone—producers, traders, manufacturers, and consumers—then this slump will go on.
I want to deal with a factor which has aggravated this slump. I refer to the Australian cuts. I put a Question to the Prime Minister on Monday. I asked him for something which in this debate I have heard asked for from both sides of the House, namely, a Commonwealth conference. Probably not every hon. Member agrees with the reason which I gave for holding such a conference—because of
the serious unemployment in Britain, arising directly out of decisions of Commonwealth Governments.
I want to try to get some light on what happened at the last conference, and on whether this matter was discussed. From the Prime Minister's reply, it obviously was discussed. Otherwise, why should the Prime Minister have said:
The Commonwealth Finance Minister's, after their conference in January, re-affirmed the need for frequent and comprehensive consultation between Governments within the Commonwealth on the problems of the sterling area. They stated that steps would be taken within the next few months …
I am satisfied that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and, surely, the President of the Board of Trade, knew what those steps were going to be so far as South Africa and Australia were concerned, and the effect they were going to have on the trade of this country. If they did not, what were they discussing at the conference? Is there no confidence between the various heads of the Commonwealth these days? It is not what we were led to believe by the red, white and blue publications which poured forth from the Central Office.
And then the Prime Minister went on to say:
It is not true that serious unemployment in Britain is arising directly out of the decisions of other Commonwealth Governments.
An hon. Member, speaking about the effect of a decision of the Pakistan Government, belied that fact. This cutting from a Conservative newspaper in Scotland, the "Daily Record," last week, "Australian import cuts hit Scots lace


industry," belies that fact. I want every Lancashire and textile Member of Parliament to read, in the Prime Minister's reply,
It is not true that serious unemployment has arisen directly out of the decisions of other Commonwealth Governments or from any other cause."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th March, 1952; Vol. 498, c. 7.]
In other words, we have heard repeatedly today about 70,000 unemployed in the textile industry in Lancashire alone, but the Prime Minister says that is not serious.

Mr. Fort: I should like the hon. Member to do what his colleague did earlier, namely, to say part-time working and unemployed numbering 70,000.

Mr. Ross: It is pretty serious for the housewife trying to run a home.

Mr. Fort: Yes; but that figure includes part-time working.

Mr. Ross: I received a letter this evening from a constituent on a constituency matter, and at the end of it I read:
I have learned, since starting to write this, that six more girls were paid off on Friday last, and that Dobson and Brown are now working short time, a fortnight in and a week out.
You can call that by any name you like, but the housewife calls it unemployment.

Mr. Hale: I have some constituents who rank as part-time and apparently are not even classified as unemployed unless they are out on a Monday in the middle of the month, and who are working three days in five weeks.

Mr. Ross: If this debate has proved anything, it is that the situation is serious, no matter how one chooses to describe the state of unemployment in the industry. For the Prime Minister to suggest that it is not true that serious unemployment has arisen in Britain from any cause is fantastic. Must the figure go to one million before it is serious, or how high?

Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing: I remember hearing my right hon. Friend use that phrase. I think he said, "from this cause."

Mr. Ross: The hon. Gentleman could not have heard the Prime Minister say that because it was in a written answer, and he will find it in Monday's HANSARD.
In Scotland, where the unemployment percentage is double that of the rest of the country, we consider it is already serious. The figures in Ayrshire are rising every day. I want to refer to industries in my constituency that have not been mentioned. The lace industry in Britain is divided between Nottingham and part of the Kilmarnock constituency—three towns, Darvel, Newmilns and Galston, from which a great proportion of our lace comes in the form of lace curtains, Madras muslins, table spreads and the like.
There had been a certain amount of recession but not much until now. What was reported last week in the Scottish Press about the Australian cuts has now created a serious situation. There are fears of unemployment facing the 2,000 workers in the Irvine Valley lace industry. What is the President of the Board of Trade prepared to do about it? The lace workers and the manufacturers in Kilmarnock constituency, as well as the country and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, got very little hope from his speech.
The point is that we cannot afford to lose these industries, on which the economy of the country and our progress this year depend. We must build up the textile industry and get the necessary volume of exports. Lace industry figures show that Australian imports represent £1,390,000 or 36 per cent. of total lace exports, or 16 per cent. of the whole trade. That does not take into account the further deterioration caused by the South African position.
With the cut to 20 per cent. which has been announced, the permissible quota hardly covers the orders already contracted for which are either on their way to Australia or in warehouses awaiting shipment. The manufacturers would like to have the ideas of the President of the Board of Trade on that matter and on the question of the sanctity of contracts. I hope he will earnestly consider the problem, because to ask the industry to carry these heavy stocks and to have the Bank rate raised is to throw the lace trade into financial chaos at a time when the industry, under the present Government, has not a pleasant prospect for the future.
Then there is the question of switching to other markets. The dollar market


is absolutely impossible so far as America is concerned, and the President of the Board of Trade knows why. The dollar market for lace is completely cut out by a high tariff wall. As far as Canada is concerned, the lace industry has just embarked on a five-year publicity programme and does not expect any immediate return. Here is the position of how hard and how directly the Australian decision has affected that industry.
I want to deal with another textile that has not been mentioned, the carpet industry.

Mr. Nabarro: Hear, hear.

Mr. Ross: As everyone knows, Kilmarnock, followed by Kidderminster, which closely follows it, are important carpet manufacturing centres. There is no industry that has given itself over more whole-heartedly to the question of boosting exports in the past five years. A firm in my constituency has just completed a new extension and into that extension probably will go Rolls-Royce engines.
The industry has been so anxious to help the Government in their determination to get dollars that whereas in Kilmarnock we have a Canadian firm producing agricultural implements, the carpet industry has set up a factory in Canada. Their position—and this applies to Glasgow, and to some other Scottish constituencies is that short time is already being worked. I will leave the hon. Member for Kidderminster to speak for the English section. Here again it is an under-the-belt blow that has come from Australia, with exactly the same kind of bedevilment and confusion about contracts and difficulties being thrown on to the industry out of which they cannot readily see a way.
When the President of the Board of Trade appeared, I wondered what kind of stuff we should get. I remember the breezy garden-party efforts he made over transport, but with the problems he has on his hands now I do not wonder he stands there and gives us placid addresses and does not throw his weight about as he did then. What is to be done? Carpets are to be free from Purchase Tax, we gather from a reply given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Mr. Nabarro: I am sure the hon. Gentleman does not wish to mislead the House. Carpets are still subject to 33⅓ per cent. tax.

Mr. Ross: I regret that I misunderstood the reply the hon. Member received to his Question. That makes the position exactly the same as in the lace industry. Both of these industries are bedevilled again by this D scheme.

Mr. Shepherd: Does the hon. Member realise that they are not bedevilled by the D scheme?

Mr. Ross: If the hon. Gentleman would read the correspondence from manufacturers of lace—

Mr. Shepherd: We are talking about carpets.

Mr. Ross: If we get the question of Purchase Tax on carpets the same thing is going to apply.
In this age of abbreviations, I do not think any abbreviation has been more apt than that applied to this D scheme, judging by the remarks which have been made about it today. Remember that the great bulk of the textile trade of England, and Scotland as well, is for utility products in the home market. This new scheme will raise prices and make it more difficult for people to take up their share of the home market allocation; quite apart from the fact that another aspect of the policy of the Government, which will be applied in a few hours, will further reduce the purchasing power of the mass of the people; that new charge which will affect their ability to take up the slack.
This fear of unemployment is spreading in the textile industry, and when other people read about it in the newspapers the same fear eats into them. They wonder whether the bad old days are coming back, and the tendency is to hold on to what they have; not to buy the carpet they need or the dress that they would like. Unemployment snowballs and creates unemployment, and this curtailing of necessary spending will worsen the position.
What is to be done? The President of the Board of Trade should accept the advice which has been so freely given to him and exempt all textiles from the


incidence of Purchase Tax and the D scheme which he announced so recently. That at least would help meantime. Then he has other things to do. He has to achieve price stability and work for the freedom of trade within the Commonwealth. There should be a new Commonwealth conference called immediately to deal with this specific matter.
Do not let us accept this talk about over-production. Go into any home in Britain and ask the housewives to believe that there is over-production in the textile industry, when she needs so much and the person next door needs so much. The same thing applies throughout the world. We come back to what the hon. Member for Louth said. It is a crisis of the capitalist system, the failure to equate the purchasing power of the people with the productive capacity. I can see absolutely no hope of the present Government being able to lead us towards a solution.

5.8 a.m.

Mr. G. B. Drayson: I should first declare my particular interest in this debate. The textile industry is the largest single industry in my constituency, and I am a director of cotton and woollen companies. As a result of this debate, the House is in no doubt about the magnitude of the problem which confronts the industry at the present time. I know the Government will be anxious to take what steps they can to help us to solve these problems, although it has been appreciated by hon. Members on both sides of the House that many aspects affecting the textile trade are world problems over which we have very little control. But the whole matter is one of immediate importance, and I think we need some immediate action to deal with it.
As I see it, we are confronted with three special problems. One is the question of overseas markets. The second is the position of the home trade and home consumption of textiles. The third is the financial and technical problems which are facing manufacturers at the present time. On the question of overseas problems I should like to reinforce what has already been said in this debate—that the Government should make a special point, when negotiating further trade agreements, to see that textiles are written into those agreements.

Mr. Hale: If the hon. Member will allow me, this point has been put so often; it was put by an hon. Member just now: when we buy meat from the Argentine, will we insist upon their buying textiles in return? Does that mean that we are talking about bulk buying and selling or are the individual butchers to be allowed to buy textiles vicariously in the Argentine?

Mr. Drayson: Greece, for example, has already been mentioned in this debate. I do not think we have a trade agreement at all with the Greek Government but we do buy a considerable amount of produce from Greece every year, and it would be reasonable for us to say they should spend a certain amount of sterling in this country on our textiles. The exact textiles they buy is a matter for individual traders to make contact with buyers in that country, where the Government could license the expenditure of a certain amount of sterling for purchasing textile goods.
It does not involve bulk buying or bulk selling at all. It involves a quota system agreed to by the Governments—that a certain amount of money shall be made available for purchasing textiles rather than that the Governments or countries with which we are doing business should buy textiles from a third party.

Mr. J. Edwards: Does the hon. Member mean that if, for example, we are making an agreement on meat or some other essential commodity, he would rather not buy the foodstuffs than make an agreement in which another Government were not told they had to buy this or that? If he is saying that, it is very serious. Is the hon. Member saying that, however much we need the food, we will not take it unless the other country earmarks sterling for a particular purchase?

Mr. Drayson: No, I am saying that if we reach agreement we should see that textiles are written into that agreement. If the Argentine say quite definitely, "We do not want your textiles," I should have thought that to reasonable people it would have been possible to explain the position of this country.

Mr. Houghton: They are not reasonable.

Mr. Drayson: We should make a special effort at this time, pointing out our problems to the countries whose produce we are anxious to take, and stating that it would be appreciated—

Mr. J. Edwards: I have never known a single negotiation where every effort has not been made to do exactly that; and I have no doubt exactly the same thing is happening under the present Government. But, as I have already pointed out, in the case of the Argentine I was not able even to supply the yarn they wanted to put into the agreement. That was because at that time there was a sellers' market and a terrific demand all over the world for our yarn.

Mr. Drayson: That is the point. The position is now different. We would be able to supply yarn or cloth. I am dealing with any new agreement or commitment. I am not blaming the hon. Member for his inability to persuade the Argentine Government to take our textiles which we would not have been able to supply. I am saying that in any fresh agreement entered into, the House should urge the Government to make a point of seeing what can be done to ensure that our textile goods go into the markets concerned.
Having just mentioned Greece, I should like to put a question to the President of the Board of Trade and to ask what is the position about Italian cloth coming into the English market. Now that we are having difficulties at home, is it not a fact that Italian cloth can still come into this country and compete with our own product? A lot has been said during this debate about Japan, and I should like to say that the workers of Lancashire and in the textile industry in general will remember well which Government has been in power during the past six years, when Japan has been able to build up her industrial capacity and to re-establish herself in the world.

Mr. Anthony Greenwood: Will the hon. Gentleman say what steps he thinks the last Government should have taken to stop Japan doing that?

Mr. Drayson: I merely made a statement of fact as to the Government that was in power. If the Government thought it was possible to do anything about the situation, no doubt they would have done it, unless they could not find anything to do.

Mr. S. Silverman: The hon. Gentleman is not being clever when he says that Lancashire workers will remember which Government was in power when something happened, if he intends to infer that that Government was to be blamed in some way for what has happened, or could have controlled it. The Japanese industry was built up in that period by the American Government, with American capital, for a set purpose, and if the hon. Gentleman says we should have quarrelled with the Americans about it, I agree with him.

Mr. Drayson: I said I thought it useful to the public, when reading the speech of the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle), to remember that the Socialist Government was in power when the Japanese were building up their industry.

Mr. Anthony Greenwood: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will refresh our memories and tell us what practical proposals in that direction he himself submitted during the six years of the Labour Government?

Mr. Drayson: I remember a delegation going to the President of the Board of Trade when certain proposals were put forward, as suggested by the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield (Air Commodore Harvey). The suggestion was that a delegation should certainly go to Tokyo and see that the British textile industry's interests were considered in any discussion that took place at that time.

Mr. T. Driberg: If the hon. Gentleman is arguing that the electorate are to hold responsible a Government for whatever happens when it is in power, can we take it that the public are to assume that this Government are responsible for the present serious unemployment?

Mr. Drayson: That would possibly be equally true. That is precisely what hon. Gentlemen opposite are trying to do when they suggest that the effects we are suffering from now—which are again the results of their mismanagement of affairs for six years—are the result of this Government having taken over only six months ago.

Mr. Joseph T. Price: Is that the hon. Memer's idea of conducting the Council of State which has been referred to so charmingly by hon. Members on his own side?

Mr. J. Edwards: Will the hon. Member for Skipton (Mr. Drayson) put forward some sensible suggestions? We are dealing with a serious situation in this industry, and we ought really to pool our ideas and not resort to all this totally irresponsible talk and what I consider to be the lowest kind of political artifice to which I have listened for a very long time.

Mr. Drayson: Perhaps I have been listening to the speeches of hon. Members opposite for so long that I have fallen into the error of their ways. I shall put forward what I consider to be practical suggestions. I would first say a word about the action which Australia recently took. We all appreciate what Australia has done in the sterling area in the past six years, but her recent action has been rather a blow to the sterling area as a whole. If individual countries within the sterling area are to take unilateral action, it will tend to undermine the confidence of the members of the sterling area in each other.
As to the cancellation of orders placed by Australian firms, I am told that in many cases the goods were ready for delivery before 7th March. The Australian buyers asked the merchants in England to delay shipment, and this was done in order to oblige the Australian customers. The merchants find that, through their action to maintain the good will of their Australian customers, they are now penalised by being unable to deliver the goods at all. I hope that, when they are able to re-open their markets, Australia and South Africa will give some preference to British textiles rather than the products of some of our competitors.
I am glad that reference has been made to the possibility of exploring the markets of Eastern Europe. I want to put on record the comments made by the Secretary for Overseas Trade in his speech at Geneva on 7th March to the Economic Commission for Europe. I admit that towards the end of the conference he became rather sceptical as to whether any good was likely to arise in this direction,

but he was full of hope at the beginning, and said:
It would be most helpful to Western Europe, and, I am sure, equally valuable to Eastern Europe, which seems to be so short of consumer goods, if some way could be found of increasing Eastern European imports of textiles from Western Europe. This is one way in which we could help each other. Let us try to do so.
What has happened? Under trade agreements entered into by the party opposite, this country has received considerable quantities of grain and timber from the U.S.S.R. It is reasonable to expect that the U.S.S.R. should take some of our consumer goods in exchange.
Another problem is the position in the home market in the wholesale and retail trades. Sales are now at an extremely low level, and it has been suggested that adjustments should be made in the D scheme. Some people would like to see it suspended altogether or brought into operation on, say, 1st January next year with a Purchase Tax-free holiday for textiles in the meantime. I really think something like that will have to happen, even if it is only for two or three months, just to try to clear some of the stocks and to get down to a sound price basis, which everyone would like to see.
Reference has been made to the effect of the D scheme on the medium-priced fabrics. If more drastic action cannot be taken, I suggest that the figure of 4s. should be raised to 6s. That would help considerably because the effect of the D scheme has meant that a large number of medium-priced articles are now more expensive to the consumer than they were before.
Management could be helped in a number of ways. I am in favour of the increase in the Bank rate. It will achieve results in other directions which will ultimately be for the benefit of all, but it has had an adverse effect on textile companies, and I should like the Chancellor to see if it is not possible for the Inland Revenue Department to deal more leniently with textile companies who are in the process of paying their Income Tax and Profits Tax.

Mr. W. Nally: Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting that the Inland Revenue should be given a vague sort of instruction that they shall deal leniently with cases of Income Tax


arrears or difficulties affecting a particular industry? If so, that would create a remarkable precedent.

Mr. Drayson: I do not think so. In many cases the Inland Revenue are able to spread the payment of Income Tax and Profits Tax, if it is an industry dealing in hundreds of thousands of pounds and that money could be more usefully employed in carrying stocks or continuing a business without resorting to bank borrowing. It is not an unusual arrangement to find that Income Tax liability is spread over six months.

Mr. H. Hynd: A moment ago the hon. Gentleman said he was in favour of the increase in the Bank rate which, he said, was an added burden on industry. Now he says that because of that he would like to see some special arrangement by the Inland Revenue to spread payments, otherwise money would have to be borrowed at an increased rate. Is he not contradicting himself?

Mr. Drayson: I am not unduly concerned about the Bank rate itself. One or 2 per cent. on borrowing, which is a charge against trading profits, is not a very large item. I am perfectly consistent. With the shortage of capital and the restriction on trading, money reserved for the payment of Income Tax and Profits Tax could temporarily be employed in the industry if the Inland Revenue would accept payment over a longer period.

Mr. Houghton: The hon. Member is asking for a tax-free loan from the Inland Revenue.

Mr. Drayson: That would at least, perhaps, enable extra profits to be made from which additional taxation could later be enjoyed by the Treasury.
Also, I should like to see a review by the Chancellor of the request he has made to the banks about their policy of advances. On 10th March, I think it was, the Chancellor said he had asked the banks to consider sympathetically any requests made for advances by the farming industry where such loan was for increased production. I think that it would be quite possible to say that the strict conditions which he has laid down could be relaxed for a short while to tide

the textile industry over its current difficulties. If we could have other concessions, such as attention to Purchase Tax in the way I have described, to enable stocks to be cleared, then this trouble would be found to be temporary.
But if the outlook is as dark as some hon. Members fear, then the banks and Inland Revenue authorities will no doubt take a different view. If, however, we consider this as a temporary phase, then we are justified in making these alterations in policy.
Mention has been made of the Liverpool Cotton Exchange. There is a feeling in Lancashire that we should like to be able to buy direct from the Raw Cotton Commission at the sterling equivalent of New York prices, plus any difference because of freight charges and brokerage involved. At the same time, owing to the difficulties that some of the spinners are experiencing, I would suggest that the Commission itself should be empowered to give credit for, say, sixty days, when a spinner is taking up raw cotton.
I think that the President was quite right in not coming forward with his suggestions as to how this problem should be tackled in detail; but, as a result of this debate, I am sure that the President will be able to discuss the substance of the matter with other Members of the Government and then come forward with proposals for getting over the present textile troubles.

5.35 a.m.

Mr. Harold Davies: I have listened with interest to the argument of the hon. Member for Skipton (Mr. Drayson) and it seemed to me that he has really been making a case for "featherbedding" the industry when, on other occasions today, hon. Members opposite have told us that we want more energy and initiative in this industry; more private enterprise, which means more keen competition. But suppose that one accepts the argument supporting the idea of a free loan to the industry; then my answer is that that is not the problem.
The problem is getting rid of the stocks in the pipeline of the textile industry. Seventy five per cent. of the output of the British textile industry is sold in the home market. Even with a loan we shall not solve the problem which arises whereby, with the re-armament policy envisaged by


the Conservative Government, 75 per cent. of the consumers have not the purchasing power to buy these commodities. There is no getting away from that argument.
For the other 25 per cent. we are to search the markets of the world. No longer can we hide the argument that with a Budget of £4,500 million, of which one-third is to be devoted to armaments, we can get anything else but the kind of unemployment that is now arising throughout the world. I overheard the President of the Board of Trade say that it was inevitable. I have stood, all along, for what I stand for now; I believe that which is happening is inevitable under any Government, Labour or Conservative, it they follow a policy of overburdening the economy with re-armament to the extent that we are doing now.

Mr. Houghton: Does the hon. Member not remember the time when we had unemployment and no re-armament?

Mr. Davies: That has nothing to do with the case, and there is no need for the hon. Member to stab me in the back.
I believe we must get some agreement about East-West trade. I was perturbed to find in the B.B.C. monitoring service that the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers in Japan has now agreed to permit the barter of Japanese goods for coal from Russia. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry has drawn up a list of goods which can be bartered. It includes spun silk, yarn, rayon yarn, and rayon fabrics. There are others, but I merely want to make the point that for the sake of getting coal into Japan for the purpose of re-arming Japan and using her as a jumping-off board into China, they will even trade with Russia if the necessity seems to be there.
I submit that we have had no concrete policy put before us on East-West trade. It is all very well for an hon. Member to say, as he did, two hours ago, that China refuses to trade with the rest of the world and had declared this. Since he said that, I have tried to find such a declaration; and I do not believe he can give me any source of any direct evidence that "Red China," to use the emotive term now used by hon. Members opposite, is not prepared to trade with any part of the world if she can get goods which are useful to her.
In my constituency there is the silk fabric industry and the rayon industry. The hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield (Air Commodore Harvey), last November, drew attention to the growing crisis in the rayon industry. I do not intend to descend to the political dishonesty of accusing the present Government of causing this situation in the textile industry; but I do say that the world neurosis which has led to the raw materials of the world being sucked into an uneconomic re-armament programme is responsible not only for the crisis in the textile industry, but for the crisis in the other industries of the world.
I was pleased to hear the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield refer to the need, especially in the silk industry, for the stabilisation of prices for a longer period. Speaking from memory, I think it is right that at the International Silk Conference in London in, I believe, September, 1951, we had such a guarantee. That is a good thing for the industry; but could we maintain it?
In a place like Leek we are pretty well dependent on this industry, and I believe that orders should be canalised into those parts of Britain where there is complete dependence on this industry. I appeal to the President of the Board of Trade to act more quickly when those of us from constituencies where there is a silk or rayon industry ask for licences to build other incoming industries. The right hon. Gentleman promised the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield that he would quickly give the licence for the rebuilding of the mill burned at Congleton, and I am interested in that because of the drift of workers from my constituency into Macclesfield. If that promise is not kept, I shall help the hon. and gallant Gentleman to be as much a rebel in his party as I have tried to be in mine when I thought my party was wrong.

Air Commodore Harvey: I am quite capable of looking after myself.

Mr. Davies: That may be, but I am interested because of the drift of workers. There is a danger that if textile workers, with all their skill, are driven into other industries, it would be difficult to find labour when the time came to re-enter the world market. Nevertheless, the argument for distributing industry more in the textile areas is fully justified.
What is the policy envisaged by the Government? That, as Americans say, is the 64-dollar question. The hon. Member for Preston, North (Mr. Amery) said that the choice was between guns and butter, and I say that we are now so loading the re-armament programme that the western world is getting neither guns nor butter. That is reflected in the textile crisis. We should do our utmost to demand that the Eastern, especially the Chinese, market should be opened.
I have been looking at a statistical review of Wall Street stock exchanges in a gazette published by the banking house of Morrow, Rowland, and Strong. There are fascinating figures, demonstrating that last June foreign shares in Japan numbered 5,000; in October they numbered 1,326,000 and had a value of 600,000 dollars. In other words, Japan is looked upon as a good investment.

Sir William Darling: Are the shares not bonus issues?

Mr. Davies: Neither this Government nor our own party, when we were sitting in that side of the House, were able to influence General MacArthur or Japanese or American policy. Japan is being used as a pipeline for investment for the United States and the putting on of a policy which disallows trade with her natural market, China. From this same statistical review it will be seen that in 1938 the average exports from Japan to China were about 43.5 per cent. of Japan's exports, while about 5.8 per cent. went to the rest of Asia. Today, the position is reversed, as 5.8 per cent. goes to China's mainland and 40 per cent. goes to Asia, competing with the very markets we were searching for.
This is suicidal. This is not private enterprise, it is merely moving into a position where economic war will lead to physical war and world destruction. [Interruption.] Perhaps the hon. Member looks upon it in a light and trivial manner, but there are some people on the bread line, who fought in the last war, who are now realising that the dim mind of Toryism has not realised that the law of diminishing returnis beginning to operate.
We have reached a point where war solves no political problems. If we agree

on that, let us use an international conference and discussions to try to get freedom for movement of goods. In that direction more than in any other we can reach national understanding and the solution of these problems. Having promised to give way in my own time, that time has come if the hon. Member opposite wishes to intervene.

Mr. F. Maclean: The hon. Member said he doubted the veracity of my statement that the Chinese Government had declared it was their policy that they wished to be self-supporting and that they wished to have trade with the Soviet Union and not the Western Powers. That statement was made by Mao-tse-Tung soon after the occupation.

Mr. Davies: That is a completely different thing. Mao-tse-Tung said they wished to be self-supporting as far as they possibly could.

Mr. Maclean: But they did not want trade with the West.

Mr. Davies: I am sure that Mao-tse-Tung has never said that he did not want to trade with Britain.

Air Commodore Harvey: Will the hon. Member have a bet on it?

Mr. Davies: One is not allowed to bet in the House of Commons, as the hon. and gallant Gentleman knows. The trouble is that this nation, having been misled by the untruths and lies of hon. Gentlemen opposite—

Mr. Maclean: On a point of order: Is it in order for the hon. Member to say "lies"?

Mr. Speaker: It is not in order, but I think that the stage which the debate has reached is one in which an unguarded expression of that kind is very apt to slip out. I have no doubt that the hon. Member will withdraw it.

Mr. Davies: Certainly, Mr. Speaker, if it is thought that I meant by that that any hon. Member or any hon. and gallant Members opposite is a villain—[HON. MEMBERS: "No"]—I will withdraw it. I will say that in their suave and sophisticated way—

Air Commodore Harvey: That makes it worse.

Mr. Davies: —they misled the public to give their social security and their future to the Government now in power. Therefore, I believe that the Government now in power have a moral obligation, contrary to what was argued by an hon. Member earlier, to do their utmost, as I am quite sure they will, to meet the problems which have been put from both sides of the House in this debate.

5.56 a.m.

Colonel Cyril Banks: I have listened to the major part of this debate and as I represent a constituency where woollen textiles are manufactured, I think it appropriate that I should put forward my views. I will endeavour to be as brief as possible and not go over much of the ground which has already been covered.
In so far as the woollen textile area is concerned, the trouble has been felt for longer in my area than in Lancashire. We have had partial unemployment for over a year now, and the position has greatly deteriorated. On the whole, the debate has been constructive from both sides of the House and will have done a lot of good, but I believe that we have limited ourselves to thinking in terms of textiles when we should have been thinking of the country as a whole; not only about wool and cotton, but everything else in the country which is affected.

Mr. S. Silverman: indicated assent.

Colonel Banks: The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) nods. I suggest that the schemes he proposed for helping the people of Nelson and Colne should be applied to all the industries in the country, and he knows that that is quite impossible.

Mr. Silverman: I think the hon. and gallant Member was present when I spoke, and he will bear in mind that I said that although the textile industry was suffering, it was not suffering in isolation, and it should be considered against a background of shortening and contracting world trade as a whole.

Colonel Banks: But the hon. Member did ask what was to be done for the people in Nelson and Colne who had made sacrifices because of the state of trade. I think that that is reasonable.

I am not trying to be awkward. I am trying to put it fairly.
On the other hand—and this is the point I wish to make—other industries in this country will be affected. We have to face that, and the only way we can do anything is to get together and exert all our energy as a team, and not do a lot of bickering across the Floor of this House on small issues. That is not a criticism of anyone, but rather a statement of our approach to the problems we have to face.
The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne rather ridiculed the amount of business which could be done by travellers sent out into the world unless they could get behind the Iron Curtain—

Mr. Silverman: rose—

Colonel Banks: No, I will not give way. You have made your speech and I wish to make mine. That was my interpretation of your speech and if you think that I have made a deliberate mistake I am prepared to sit down—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must remind the hon. and gallant Member that I have not made a speech at all. He should address his remarks to the Chair.

Mr. Silverman: I wish to make it clear that I would not accuse the hon. and gallant Member of making a deliberate mis-statement. I am sure he would not do that. But the statement the hon. and gallant Member made was wrong. My reference to Lancashire commercial travellers and agents was in their defence. It was said they could do something to open foreign markets by themselves without political aid. I was pointing out that the American Battle Act would prevent them from doing so, and that if that was to be counteracted in any way it could not be done by individual commercial travellers. I am sure that the hon. and gallant Member will see the point.

Colonel Banks: First, Mr. Speaker, I must apologise to you for having spoken to the hon. Member directly across the Floor of the House. I apologise, too, to the hon. Member if I misconstrued what he said. But the point I want to make is that outside the Iron Curtain, among free nations—and this has been said


frequently from the other side of the House—there are large numbers of people in need of the textiles we manufacture.
It is not a question of any side of the House asking the President of the Board of Trade for a solution to these problems. No one expects him to have the solution, and no one ought reasonably to ask him. It is a question of co-operation between the President and the Treasury and the co-operation of the directors and people who operate business in textiles. It is a question of their going out, and doing their job.
It is the job of all of us to co-operate in everything possible to maintain and win trade. If we all co-operate, that aim is possible of achievement. Therefore, I appeal not only to the President but to industry generally. All engaged in the textile industry must put their backs into it, and when directors want help from the Board of Trade they should go after it and not stop until they receive it.

6.2 a.m.

Mr. W. T. Proctor: The fact that we are all here at this hour indicates the deep concern for and interest we have in the subject we are discussing. I recently attempted to put a Question to the Prime Minister asking that some time be given to discuss the affairs of England on special days. At that time I had intended to put down a Question asking that we should discuss the special affairs of Lancashire, but that was not in order. I feel that we should have more time to discuss matters such as we are discussing this morning in respect of various areas. Having spent much of my time in Wales I do not wish to be envious, but I think that both Wales and Scotland are allotted considerable discussion periods in this House and that we ought to have a few special days for England.

Mr. Ross: My hon. Friend can discuss England any time he likes on any Friday.

Mr. Proctor: Some very interesting theories have been put forward in this debate. The first was on the question of responsibility. It has been suggested by one hon. Member that the Labour Government are mainly responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves in the cotton industry today. Earlier, the hon. Member said we on this side were

in power when the Japanese potential was built up.
He appeared to hold the theory that the Labour Government was responsible for everything that had happened in every country in the world during the period we were in power. Now we are being held responsible for everything that is happening at present in this country. It is a far-fetched theory and the Tory Government of the day cannot get away from their responsibility for the present situation.
When the Labour Government were in power they were the only Socialist Government in any great country in the world. But this Government is one of many capitalist and Conservative Governments throughout the world. The principles they uphold are in operation and the ills we are suffering come as a direct result of the operation of those principles throughout the world. I therefore say that the present Government, which does not believe in national or international planning, must accept the great responsibility for the position in which this country finds itself today.
We are faced with a tragic position in the textile industry. The ominous fact is that large-scale unemployment has returned in a great industry. I agree with hon. Members on both sides of the House that we must realise what a tremendous thing that is and how much bigger it can be in the future. Looking back over the last 15 or 20 years, I beg hon. Members to realise what a tremendous part unemployment has played in the history of our time.
I do not think that Hitler would have risen to power in Europe and that we would have had the devastation of the Second World War if it had not been that millions of people in Europe who were capable of being exploited by Hitler were out of work. Unless the free democratic nations can solve the grave problem of unemployment and the problem of using the resources and the vast labour power that are at their hand in order to give the peoples of the world food, clothes and shelter, I do not think that our way of life will survive.
Everyone should consider that problem and try to find some solution to it. My own belief is that the only solution is democratic Socialism throughout the


world, and I believe that the only hope of this Government finding any solution is to depart from their principles and the policies which they have outlined and to adopt a collectivist policy. I am trying to put first things first in this problem.
I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) is not here, because he also mentioned this problem of the unemployment pay rates. They stand today at exactly the same figure as they did when we provided for them in 1947 and 1948, and the nominal sum of 26s. which was provided then would have to be raised to 34s. to provide the same standard of life now.
On top of that we have the increases that will be imposed by the present Budget, and then one can see how far the standard of life of an unemployed man has fallen in the last few years. This House, especially my hon. Friends on this side, must really face that problem. It is a problem the Government will have to decide; but our representations should be strong and direct and we should make it clear that we want the same standard of life, at least, as was represented by the 26s. when it was brought into operation. We ought as a community to say that, if we are to be faced with large-scale unemployment, we will not have the depressed standard which is represented by the present payment.
If any hon. Member wants to know what that standard is like, I invite him to follow the example of Major Vernon, a former Member of Parliament. When we were discussing the standard of living in Germany, Major Vernon lived on the German standard. If any hon. Member tries to live on 26s. a week he will soon realise the standard of living which will be imposed on large sections of our community.
The President of the Board of Trade went into the history of the textile industry, back to the beginnings of the factory system. He lost the real point in his dissertation. He stated that we became a fabulously rich country because we had new machines. Today, the position is that we have sent the new machines to other countries and have kept the old machines in our cotton in-

dustry. Between the wars the trade union leaders, the Labour Party and Lloyd George, with all his brilliance and eloquence, failed to move the Tory Party to re-equip this vast industry when that could easily have been undertaken. We sent the new machines to India, China and Japan, and left our industry with old machinery.
Will the Government give us a full report about what happened at the recent Commonwealth Finance Ministers' Conference? I cannot imagine that the conference took place without there having been some very deep discussions about the position which has since come about in relation to Australia.
Speaking in Manchester recently, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply welcomed the action of Australia in setting her house in order. I see very little in Australia's action for this country to welcome. I attempted to put a Question to the Prime Minister to ask him if that was the policy of Her Majesty's Government, but I found that that could be done only if a Cabinet Minister made a statement in the country. It is a very strange state of affairs when a Parliamentary Secretary can welcome the action of another country which leads to such disaster for a large section of our country.
At present, members of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce have goods on order or en route to Australia after 7th March to the value of £20,209,643. The unilateral repudiation of contracts by Australia is a very serious matter for them. Who will bear this vast loss? I foresee the very gravest difficulties if the full financial burden is thrown upon these firms as a result of this policy. Also, the position of the employees of the firms affected by the Australian action can be very gravely affected. The Government should press the Australian Government to review the position and honour their contracts. The Government must carefully consider how the financial burden which is falling on Lancashire trade is to be shared and how the industry is to be assisted, especially as the increase in the Bank rate has made the position more difficulty.
I appeal to the Government to abolish Purchase Tax in the textile industry. I also support the idea of the closest possible contact with the Commonwealth


and Empire in these difficult days. We are in an entirely new world situation today from the position in pre-war days. The fact that this country is too small to support its population of 50 million is one of our great difficulties. People are searching the world today for a new unit. Some look to the British Empire, some to a united Europe, and others to a unit which would contain the United States. The ideal unit would be the whole world with every race co-operating for peaceful purposes.
It is, unfortunately, true that when a people acquire sovereignty they are reluctant to change, but I should like to see a great gesture made to the Colonial Empire in the shape of an offer of federation with them. We would then have a population of about 115 million with resources that could be developed on a grand scale. The whole of our textile industry could be fully employed as a result of such a union.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer should consider the release of post-war credits to unemployed, widows, and others in exceptional difficulties. Such a concession would be of great assistance in tiding people over a difficult period. I appeal to the Government, and especially to those at the Treasury, not to be afraid to take a few financial risks to save great human suffering in the areas we represent. All the cotton mills in my division are working short-time and all the areas affected expect the Government to do all in their power to alleviate the position.

6.20 a.m.

Mr. Anthony Fell: I hope that the hon. Member for Eccles (Mr. Proctor) who has given us the benefit of his views on the subject of textiles, will not be offended if I do not follow him in great detail; and, indeed, do not follow him at all into his great scheme for world co-operation.
In 1929, we sent from this country textile exports worth £241 million, and by 1931 the figure had fallen to £108 million. That was a tremendous fall, and, as everybody knows, the country fell with it. Now I want to go from Lancashire to the other end of the world; to New Zealand, where I happened to be living at that time on a small farm

with my father. We out there were suffering very gravely because New Zealand fell at the same time as we fell with the diminution of those exports. New Zealand was hard put to it to survive, and it is certainly true that the New Zealand farmers did not know where to turn to keep their farms going.
One may think that this is far removed from textiles, but I beg the House for its indulgence, because it is very relevant. In 1932, the Ottawa Agreement was signed and then, as the House knows, Imperial Preference, and a whole scheme of trade tariffs, was set up surrounding the whole of the Empire. It is true to say that, from that time onwards, the people of New Zealand began to revive because they were able to get reasonably fair prices for primary products; and the people of this country began to revive because they had better markets abroad; and the basis was Empire and Commonwealth first, and the rest of the world second.
Some people criticised this, saying, "You will hurt New Zealand if you put tariffs on and do not allow cheap things into New Zealand." But we were then importing goods from Japan, and nothing could have been cheaper; canvas shoes with crepe soles, at from 2s. 3d. a dozen pairs, to 7s. 6d. for the larger sizes; towels at about 5s. 6d. a dozen for the large size. Socks, and all manner of textile goods; and yet it was at that time that we in New Zealand could not afford to live, in spite of these low-priced goods from Japan.
If we come right forward to Lancashire, and to 1952, we see the depression which has been debated now for 13 hours in this House. If we come right forward to 1952 we see Britain is once again in trouble over her exports, and I draw the attention of the House to a matter raised earlier tonight by my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, North (Mr. J. Amery). That is the question of G.A.T.T. Hon. Members on the other side have repeatedly talked about Commonwealth policies, but their leader led them, and led this country, into the agreement commonly known as G.A.T.T. There is another meaning to the word "gat," which is American word for an automatic revolver. It is not inapt, because this is certainly an American trade weapon that is being used to our


disadvantage. It is unrealistic for hon. Members on the other side to talk about Commonwealth policies when we are tied to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Mr. J. Edwards: That is rubbish. There is no reason why Australia, if she were so minded, should not discriminate in our favour in respect of quantitative restrictions.

Mr. Fell: That is true, but if this agreement means anything it means what is said in the introduction:
Recognising that their relations …
that is, the relations of the countries which entered into it—
… in the field of trade and economic endeavour should be conducted with a view to raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of real income and effective demand, developing the full use of the resources of the world and expanding the production and exchange of goods.
So far so good. It goes on:
Being desirous of contributing to these objectives by entering into reciprocal and mutually advantageous arrangements directed to the substantial reduction of tariffs and other barriers to trade and to the elimination of discriminatory treatment in international commerce.
The whole spirit of this agreement, in which countries like Greece, Czechoslovakia and the United States took part, and in which the whole of the British Empire is involved right up to the ears, is to lower tariff barriers and end discrimination in trade. Therefore, I say it is unrealistic to talk about a Commonwealth Conference and trying to help the trade of Lancashire when we are bound by this agreement. We should break the spirit of the agreement if we had discriminatory tariffs of that nature.

Mr. Hale: There is nothing in G.A.T.T. to prevent Commonwealth areas dealing one with another within the sterling area. Surely no one from our side has been advocating tariffs of the type to which the hon. Gentleman is referring.

Mr. Fell: There is everything to restrict it. If hon. Members will study the agreements to which I have referred, they will find that before doing so any signatory to these agreements has to give notice to the others, and if there is a disagreement they have to meet together and settle it.

Mr. Hale: We are talking about trade between Australia and Britain, between New Zealand and Britain, between South Africa and Britain. There is nothing in G.A.T.T. to restrict that. There may be something to prevent other people trading, but that is a different matter.

Mr. Fell: That is my point; that there is everything to restrict our putting on preferential tariffs.
Leading from that, I am saying that it is out of keeping with the action taken by hon. Members opposite, led by their leader, to keep on suggesting that there should be an economic Commonwealth conference to discuss this matter. G.A.T.T., as my hon. Friend suggested, ought to be given the 60 days' notice which is necessary. After that, there should be an economic conference, or a trade conference, of the Commonwealth.
There is this distinction; last time, at Ottawa, the other countries of the Commonwealth had something they also wished to get rid of, the same as we had. It may now be said that they can get rid of their primary products wherever they wish. But it must also be realised that we can co-operate in the Commonwealth; that there are vast lands in the Commonwealth almost untapped in regard to the growing of food and primary products. If only we can get together and make a real, long-term arrangement for increasing the food production of these Empire and Commonwealth countries, I believe that would be part of a long-term solution of our export trade problems in countries throughout the world.
Hon. Members opposite from time to time have fallen for the phrase, "The raising of the standard of living of the people to solve our export problems." In 1846 settlers in fairly large numbers began to arrive in New Zealand. Shortly after that the Maoris were put on an equal footing, to all intents and purposes, with the white settlers. When I was last there in 1933, it was true to say that, after nearly 100 years, progress in raising the standard of living of the Maoris in New Zealand was very slow. The Maoris are not a backward people. They are probably the most forward of all the coloured races. But we cannot change the standard of living of a so-called backward people sufficiently to make a great impression on world trade in a matter


of five or 10 years, or even in a generation.
The real field of operation for extending our trade in the British Commonwealth and Empire is in countries like Australia which are already eating all their own food because their populations are growing. The one way to save the future long-term trade of this country is to shoot G.A.T.T. and to bring in a proper system of Imperial Preference and trade.

Mr. Hale: I want to correct an unintentional misinterpretation of our attitude. The hon. Gentleman said that we on this side have fallen for the expression "raising the standard of living of the people to solve our export trade." I have talked and written on this subject extensively over the last three or four years, and I assure the hon. Member that he might just as well say that any Christian was falling for the Sermon on the Mount to get a mention in heaven. We have never said it. We have said that we should try to raise the standard of living of mankind, in accordance with the United Nations Charter, because it is our duty to do it and because the world is intolerable unless we do try to do it.

Mr. Fell: My point was that a lot of people have fallen for the theory that it could be done quickly. Of course, we have to try to do it, but it cannot bring a great expansion of trade to Britain in the very near future.

6.36 a.m.

Mr. Frederick Lee: I was distressed to hear the last suggestion of the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) because, as I understand world problems today, they arise largely from the legitimate desires of those whom we consider backward peoples to raise their standards of life in a comparatively short time. Unless we are able to assist in the process, all our efforts to avoid a world war will be vain. It will not be a question of fighting Communism as an idea, but rather of giving these peoples some object in life and some hope. Unless we do that, all Western civilisation will not avail us.
In this debate we have been asked to put unemployment in the textile industry in correct perspective. I agree, but it has been said in a way that suggests

that once put in perspective it is not really serious. It is serious. On 3rd March, when we discussed manpower, it was estimated that the number wholly or partly unemployed in Lancashire was 40,000; today, it is 70,000. That rise is at the rate of about 1,000 a day. That means a tremendous tragedy, unless the right hon. Gentleman is prepared to do more than, from his speech, he seemed prepared to do.
A point was made about the placing of textile orders abroad by the Labour Government. The hon. Member for Clitheroe (Mr. Fort) touched on it, and my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) legitimately answered that if the Labour Government is to be criticised for sending orders abroad when Lancashire could not take them, the hon. Member was arguing that we should have put a drag on the rearmament programme.
As to the causes of our present troubles in textiles, I have listened to experts today who have said that textile industries have been built up throughout the whole world, and that they think that the recession in Lancashire is temporary. The President of the Board of Trade said that. If he is going to alarm those hon. Members who represent Lancashire, and the people there who still hope to get a living from textiles, by using arguments which presuppose that the industry never really can get over the hump, while saying that this recession is purely temporary, they will conclude that he and the Government have not the slightest clue to the situation.
"The Times" yesterday gave that impression, and said they thought it was temporary, that it was caused by the pipeline getting blocked up, and that in six months we could clear it. The "Manchester Guardian" took precisely the opposite line, saying that there was a permanent drying-up of world markets, that new textile industries had come to stay, and they inferred that the trade union leaders in Lancashire are somewhat to blame because they demanded higher pay for the cotton operatives to meet the increased cost of living.
We see that 75 per cent. of our textiles are sold internally. It is difficult to know to whom they are to be sold unless purchasing power is at a higher level than it has been in the industry. Several of


my hon. Friends have been criticised by hon. Members opposite for saying that the Government's policy is to divert labour from the textile industry to armaments. One or two have been very indignant when that statement has been made. I suggest that it is for them to show us that they are not doing that.
The fact that they need to enlarge the armament industry presupposes that they are going to take people from some other industries. If the industries from which they are taking personnel do not include the textile industry, will they tell us how we are to differentiate between the action they take in the case of an industry from which they are going to take people and an industry from which they are not?
I cannot find any difference whatever in their policy towards industries which they wish to denude of manpower and their policy towards the Lancashire textile industry. If they wish to prove that it is not their object to run down manpower in Lancashire, it is for them to show by concrete action that they do not wish to do so. I fail to see any difference between the policy which the Government apply in a county or industry which has suffered unemployment and the policy they pursue in an area of the country where there is no unemployment.
In the course of the Budget debate, some of my hon. Friends said that an inflationary situation would be brought about by the Budget, and some said it was deflationary. Hon. Members opposite are sceptical about that. I think we are in the position where there might be a new phenomenon in which, within the same country, we have an inflationary pull in some parts, and in others a most deflationary pull indeed.
I am quite sure that is caused by the increase in the Bank rate and the seeking to put a veto on hire-purchase agreements. The Government should understand what it means. In many Lancashire towns the people are concerned not only with buying furniture on the hire-purchase system they also buy clothes and boots in that way. If this veto is put on hire-purchase agreements, it means that a great percentage of the purchase normally made will stop. The Chancellor says—

Mr. H. Strauss: The hon. Member is making a mistake. There is no veto on

hire-purchase, even in the case of those goods which are scheduled in the Order. But most of the goods he is mentioning are not even scheduled in the Order.

Mr. Lee: I am saying that once the full scope of hire-purchase agreements is restricted, the flow of trade, so essential for the welfare of our Lancashire communities, is also restricted.
I was about to say that the Chancellor excused his policy by saying it is so essential that we should stop the fall in the value of the £, and that many of the problems result from a lack of confidence in the £. The real issue in Lancashire is that there is a growing lack of confidence in the future of the cotton industry. Once that situation obtains, the work put in during the last six years has gone for nothing.
No matter what type of blandishments are held out, never again will the people of Lancashire believe that there is any future for them in the cotton industry. Instead of a happy confident collection of workpeople which existed a year or two ago, one sees a fearful, furtive, apprehensive collection of men and women who are wondering when their turn will come to be thrown on the scrap heap of unemployment.
I do not know whether the President of the Board of Trade has ever seen a Lancashire town during a depression. Some of us were born and brought up in those circumstances. It was not a nice sight to see hundreds and thousands of men and women depressed, having reached the condition where they believed that they were not as good as others, and had no reason for existence. Once we get into that position again in Lancashire, the textile industry is gone for good, because it took a lot of hard work to build it up again and to get those people to believe that they could have confidence in the future of their industry.
This Government must be prepared to shoulder the responsibility which now rests upon them, and not merely to argue that this is an international phenomenon; that textiles are in the doldrums all over the world. If they do that, then the Governments of other countries where the textile industry is depressed will do the same. Everyone will say, "It is too bad,


but there is nothing we can do about it, because it is an international problem." I do not accept that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) pointed out that a comparatively few years ago a lot of us from Lancashire were addressing the cotton workers and trying to get them to go back into the industry, because of the tremendously important part it could play in righting our overseas balances, etc. How does the President of the Board of Trade think it possible now for those of us who stumped Lancashire doing everything we possibly could to get people into the industry and asked for more and more production, believing that that would be the answer to any threat of unemployment, to advocate those policies in Lancashire not only in the textile industry but in other industries when we do not know what other industries may also be facing these difficulties in a few months?
The Government should realise that the obvious requirement now is a big increase in demand. How can we achieve that? First, by exactly the opposite policy to that which the Treasury and the Board of Trade are pursuing. I do not know whether anyone would care to speak from the Despatch Box now and argue that in Lancashire there is too much money chasing too few goods. That would be fantastic. The precise opposite is the fact.
We are not suffering from a buyers' strike caused by some words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton). I never heard such nonsense in my life. Let anyone go to any house in Lancashire and ask the housewife whether she is scheming to lower prices by keeping her bawbees in her purse. The working man's wife is being driven to distraction in her efforts to find the money to buy the things she really needs.
We must increase purchasing power in—Lancashire and I am referring to working-class people in general—in order that they can purchase more of the goods that are available now. Indeed, to apply to the situation the classic methods of mopping up purchasing power, which one would apply to an inflation will quickly land us in the worst deflation we have ever known in this country.
It is no use the Government saying that this is an international situation over which they have not the slightest control. One of the immediate remedies we should apply—and I am glad this suggestion has also come from the other side of the House—is to allow all Lancashire textile goods to be sold free of Purchase Tax.

Mr. Nabarro: Why only Lancashire?

Mr. Lee: I merely happen to be arguing from the point of view of the area I represent. I should support the hon. Member in any legitimate claim he made on behalf of any other area. If a private trader is in the doldrums and he is overstocked, he does what he can to get rid of the stock. I suggest that we should embark on the same policy in the case of the Lancashire textile industry. The incentive to buy should be that people could obtain these textile products at rock-bottom prices and if they left their buying until next year the goods by then would be subject to Purchase Tax.

Mr. H. Boardman: Is it not a fact that retailers are reducing prices so that goods can be sold tax-free as the only method of getting rid of them?

Mr. Lee: If we declared that for the next six months these goods could be obtained free of Purchase Tax, I believe it would have a great psychological effect. If, in fact, there are people who are hanging on and not buying, it would be an inducement to them to buy. If it is true that this is a short-term slump, that is the only policy that will bring us through six months of a very difficult period. I am arguing that we must apply the theory that in time of depression credit facilities should be easier and cheaper. Unless we can move in that direction, I fear there are no other types of policy which can put the Lancashire textile industry on its feet again.
I read in the weekend Press an article which quite alarmed me in that it was reported that Japan had been given a credit of 40 million dollars to purchase United States raw cotton and that 80 per cent. of the resulting product should be made for export, including a great effort to capture the British markets. I should like the Government to tell us whether this is a wild exaggeration or whether there is any truth in it. If there is any truth whatever in it, I suggest that it


reveals something even worse, if possible, than the agreements made behind our backs between the present Japanese Government and Mr. Dulles, some few months ago. I think such a report should not go uncontradicted if the Government can contradict it.
I was going to talk about the Australian position, but that has been covered adequately. For my part, I shall only say that I am most dissatisfied with the reports we have had both from the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the President of the Board of Trade as to the part they played during the Commonwealth discussions, and I reinforce what has been advocated from this side of the House—that a new conference should be called.
The President told us during the course of his speech that encouragement will be given to existing firms to enlarge their premises. I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman about new firms? His Department controls the distribution of industry under the relevant Acts. I should like to ask him, first, whether he will now rigorously refuse to allow firms, no matter what pretext they put up, to enlarge their existing premises in towns where there is already a great vacancy list, where there are, in other words, far more jobs available than people to fill them. He should refuse to allow firms to enlarge their premises in towns of that type but should insist on them taking their businesses into areas such as Lancashire, where we now have a depression in the textile industry.
I had some little experience on a committee on the distribution of industry and, quite frankly, the Board of Trade frightened me to death. They have a phobia about dollar exports. In other words, if a firm wants to open up in Birmingham and Coventry and does not want to accept our invitation to open in Lancashire or somewhere else, and it is whispered into the ear of the President "These are dollar exports," the President gets the wind up at once and says: "By all means expand where you want to." The right hon. Gentleman may say that I am exaggerating; I do not know. But that is the sort of tendency the Board of Trade has, naturally, because it is so interested in the commercial side of affairs.
I suggest that the Board of Trade is utterly unsuited for this job and that it should be done by the Ministry of Labour, because that Department, and it alone, with all the manpower statistics available to it, can determine where expansion would be to the best advantage of the country as a whole. I hope the President will agree to look at the question of putting new factories outside the actual Development Areas.
One or two of my hon. Friends have mentioned that for certain reasons some parts of Lancashire where there is only the cotton industry were not scheduled as Development Areas. I hope the President will see that, great as has been the benefit of the whole of that scheme, we must now consider enlarging its scope and putting factories where there is the greatest need for them, irrespective of whether that happens to be in Development Areas.
I am very annoyed that the right hon. Gentleman has used the Douglas Report as an excuse for smashing the Utility scheme. It was not merely because of the Douglas Report that the Utility scheme was smashed. The decision was not made after the Douglas Report had become known It was made after 25th October. The "power lobby" upon which the Conservative Party depends insisted that the scheme, which they had never liked, should go once the Conservative Party got into power. The Conservative Party had no need to wait for the Douglas Committee to report in order to make up their minds about that.
I have quoted the words of the President of the Board of Trade in the manpower debate, in which both he and the Chancellor told us that much of the problem of the textile industry was due to the working of the Purchase Tax and Utility schemes. It is frankly dishonest to say on one occasion that the problems of the Lancashire textiles have been brought about by Purchase Tax and Utility schemes and on the next that there are world-wide implications over which the Government have not the slightest control.
The Douglas Report was never intended to be—nor is it—an objective survey of the virtues or lack of virtues of the Utility scheme. Commenting on the Committee's


interpretation of its terms of reference, the report says, in paragraph 2:
We sought official guidance on the meaning of this phrase"—
that is, "classes of goods"—
and as a result have interpreted our terms of reference to mean that our function was to consider the relationship between the existing Utility schemes and the existing Purchase Tax arrangements; that proposals to extend the Utility schemes beyond their present frontiers would be out of order; but that we were not precluded from drawing attention to anomalies or from proposing adjustments where an article outside the Utility schemes was directly competitive with, or could be substituted for, an article already within the schemes.
In other words, their terms of reference were to bring out all the anomalies they could and to say nothing about how they could make a permanent structure for the Utility schemes, and it is on the pretext of a report of that type that the right hon. Gentleman has smashed the Utility schemes. Consequently, this report has had the effect which, possibly, he intended it to have.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: The hon. Gentleman will observe that the terms of reference, which he has not read, were drawn up very carefully by the previous Government, and were very broad in their scope, and included consideration not only of the international implications of the old Utility scheme but also its effect upon consumers. It would be quite wrong—I am sure that he would not wish to give that impression—to say that the terms were limited in scope or excluded considerations which both sides of the House have at heart.

Mr. Lee: I do not wish to give any misleading impression, but the terms of reference were not that the Committee should examine objectively the Utility schemes and make a broad-based report upon them.
I agree that within the terms of reference there is the question of the effect of Purchase Tax upon our import-export position. It was said that discrimination was exercised against importers. I agree that that was so. But if the right hon. Gentleman now says that he is breaking down the Utility schemes because they are unfairly discriminating against a person importing goods to Great Britain, he had better point out to the Chancellor that he will not get more imports by

cutting them to the extent of £600 million. He will probably institute quotas, to which the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) was very much opposed a few minutes ago.
The effect of the break in the Utility schemes is undoubtedly that the incidence of taxation which was previously placed on luxury goods must now necessarily be reflected in many goods which were within the Utility scheme. Therefore, the incidence of taxation is passing again to the lower-paid worker, and he is thereby more and more restricted in his purchases at a time when the only solution of our problems is to give him more purchasing power.
For these reasons, I believe the Government have not displayed the slightest statesmanship in their approach to the textile industry. No matter how they try to ride off on the "international" pretext, a responsibility rests on them which they must discharge, and as far as we in Lancashire are concerned we shall do our level best to force them to discharge that duty. We advocated the extension of industry—and we did whatever we could to bring decency and comfort where there was misery and poverty before—and we are not going to be silent if that is to be broken down and we are to go back to the conditions of the 1920's and 1930's. We are dissatisfied with the Government's attitude, and I hope we shall bring this matter up again. We shall censure the Government on that occasion if they are not doing better than they appear to be doing now.

7.5 a.m.

Mr. Gerald Nabarro: I will not follow the hon. Gentleman the Member for Newton (Mr. Lee) because I am anxious to introduce a little of the diversification which has been alluded to as being so necessary in the textile industry. One important section of textiles, the carpet industry, has received only scant attention in the debate, although it was mentioned by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross).
The carpet industry has an important export record since the end of the war, and has had to face particularly difficult problems, even more difficult than the problems in some Lancashire towns. It should be remembered that while the cotton industry was concentrated in the


war, the carpet industry was shut down, and in Kidderminster which is, with respect to the hon. Member for Kilmarnock, the traditional home of the carpet industry in the United Kingdom, and is responsible for more than 40 per cent. of the total output of the industry, almost every carpet factory was closed from 1940 until the beginning of 1946.
Therefore, the task of restoring the factories, of taking the looms out of store and setting them up again, presented very great difficulties that were even more onerous to the management and staff than those experienced in restoring the cotton industry. Notwithstanding these difficulties the carpet industry achieved, in 1949, an overall export figure of £10,350,000. That was raised in 1950 to £15,200,000, and in 1951 the figure reached was £22,500,000, or more than double the 1949 figure.
The President of the Board of Trade was brutally frank with me in a Parliamentary Question I put to him on the Australian import cuts. I asked him what effect in money this would have on United Kingdom exports, and he said in his reply:
As the quotas are not tied to particular countries it is not possible to say precisely what amount of U.K. carpets will continue to be imported into Australia, but the effect of the restrictions will undoubtedly be serious, for Australia has recently been taking almost half of our total exports of carpets."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th March, 1952; Vol. 497, c. 2541.]
That means that of the £22,500,000 worth of carpets sent from this country last year, we are to be reduced by 80 per cent. in the case of Australian imports; and that is a loss of exports in a full year of something like £8 or £9 million. As 40 per cent. of the carpet industry of this country is centred in one comparatively small town in Worcestershire, the effect of this cut can well be imagined; and I am sorry that the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) is not in his place, because the severity of this cut in the case of Kidderminster is even greater than the matters of which he complains in the case of Nelson and Colne.
I do not, for one moment, suggest that Australia could have taken any other course. At Canberra, on 25th March, it was stated by Mr. Carver, the Government Statistician, that Australia's trade deficit for the six months ending 31st

December, 1951, was £A145 million. That is a trade deficit of 290 million Australian £'s in one year, and Australia, after all, has a national income which is only a tiny part of the income of the United Kingdom. With such a deficit, it is clear that her action was completely justified, and I do not criticise her for the action, or for the timing, or for the fact that the matter was not dealt with at the Commonwealth Finance Conference, but simply left to the self-governing Dominions themselves to decide what amount of import restrictions they were to impose.

Mr. Hale: Not discussed at all?

Mr. Nabarro: I believe that that is so; following the Statute of Westminster, and so on, the self-governing Dominions decide their own trade arrangements and in balancing their trade they have exactly the same problems as we have.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: If what the hon. Member says is correct, then why have the conference?

Mr. Nabarro: There were other matters for consideration, and in the passage of time possibly this Australian position will recover because the primary cause of the trouble there is that she is exporting only about 50 per cent. of the foodstuffs she was exporting two years ago. The increased consumption of food in Australia is a fundamental cause of the savage cut she has had to impose on United Kingdom exports.

Mr. J. T. Price: Will the hon. Member say whether, in relation to his own private business, this principle would apply in relation to a civil contract? If so, could he do nothing about it?

Mr. Nabarro: In the tangled skein of international arrangements today we have circumstances arising that make such courses of action inevitable; but I remind the hon. Member that two years ago, the United Kingdom acted in a similarly arbitrary manner with the Canadian Wood Pulp Company. The international monetary situation has made certain acts of this kind inevitable.
The President, as I see it, has only three courses by which he can help the textile industry, and I refer here not only to the carpet industry. He can guide rearmament contracts to the textile trade areas, but the effect on them would only


be trifling. Secondly, he can tackle the question of tariffs; and, thirdly, he could tackle the fiscal arrangements in the United Kingdom, and taxes of one sort or another which could be adjusted in many ways to help the textile industry. It is with the question of tariffs that I want to deal.
My hon. Friend the Member for Preston, North (Mr. Amery) alluded to the Anglo-Pakistan Agreement concluded last year. It is the classic case of how not to expand Imperial Preference. It is the worst Empire agreement we have made since the end of the war. I want to quote the effect of that agreement on the carpet industry. India and Pakistan make large quantities of carpets. They are allowed to import them into the United Kingdom free of tax. Yet if Kidderminster carpets seek to enter Pakistan or India they pay tariffs of between 31¼ and 45 per cent. Why this lack of reciprocity?
In addition the Indians, and the Pakistanis have put specific export duties on the raw materials of the British carpet industry such as wool and jute yarn which make those carpets even more uncompetitive in the world markets. The Indian Government have imposed a 30 per cent. ad valorem duty on Indian wool and 1,500 rupees per ton on jute yarn; the Pakistan Government have put a 25 per cent. ad valorem duty on wool and 35 rupees per bale of 40 lb. on jute yarn. British carpets are not only discriminated against in any attempts the manufacturers make to sell in India or Pakistan, but they are further discriminated against in competition with Indian carpet products by these very heavy taxes on the raw materials our manufacturers need.
I believe, as other hon. Members have suggested, that the way to circumvent these difficulties is to secure an overall increase in preferences, and to get that and to stimulate Empire trade we must first get rid of the encumbrance of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. I will not embarrass my right hon. Friend by pressing him further on that point now, but I hope there will be some tangible result of his deliberations on it in the next few weeks.
Let me turn to the D scheme and Purchase Tax. I am not going to flog the

same dead donkey that has been flogged all night about getting rid of the Purchase Tax.

Mr. Houghton: Why does the hon. Member think that a dead dog?

Mr. Nabarro: The hon. Member was not listening. I said dead donkey, not dog. Carpets are the only textiles which did not have any sort of utility mark, and between 1945 and 1952—when the D scheme comes in—there has been no such thing as utility carpets free of Purchase Tax. They have carried an overall Purchase Tax of 33⅓ per cent. The carpet industry was shut down during the war. Utility was for the most part introduced during the war. Now that my right hon. Friend has decided to adopt the D scheme—and, in principle, carpets are shut out because there were no utility types prior to the introduction of the D scheme—they cannot come in for any abatement of Purchase Tax.
This was confirmed by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in answer to my Question last Tuesday:
There were no utility schemes for floor coverings and they are not therefore covered by the new purchase tax arrangements provided for in the Budget Resolutions."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th March, 1952; Vol. 498, c. 25.]
Why this discrimination against carpets again? The manufacturers have enough difficulties without this added encumbrance. The least which could be done for the industry is that it should be brought within the general taxation provisions of whatever arrangements are finally made in connection with the D scheme.
I raise, finally, what is, to me, an extraordinary case. I gave my right hon. Friend's permanent officials prior warning that I intended to do so, because it seems fantastic that when the carpet industry is facing such difficulties a case of this sort could happen as a result of a misunderstanding between two Government Departments. In Kidderminster there is a famous carpet firm, Woodward Grosvenor, Limited, which is part of Gray's Carpets and Textiles, Limited. Their Kidderminster factory covers 80,000 square feet, and it is actually working two shifts in spite of the recession of trade, indeed, it is practically the only carpet factory in the town which is working two shifts.
This firm's exports have gone up steadily year by year, among them being a substantial part going to the dollar area. In 1949 its exports were worth £231,000; in 1950, £276,000, and in 1951, £310,000. The firm is working two shifts largely for the export trade. The Ministry of Supply have now come along and said that they will requisition the factory for making armaments.
I could not believe my ears when I heard that this morning. I said to the managing director, "Please photostat all your letters to the Board of Trade and send them to me." They have, and I intend to present them to the President of the Board of Trade with my compliments and appeal to him that if he has any heart for the carpet industry he will intercede in this matter and negative the requisitioning.
I think I have said sufficient on behalf of one part of the textile industry. I hope that my right hon. Friend will smile benevolently upon the interests of carpet manufacturing, which are facing great difficulties in the export market as a result of loss of the Australian trade, and other causes, Purchase Tax, and other matters. I am sure that I can rely upon his helpful co-operation in these matters.

7.24 a.m.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: We shall have to leave the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) to the kind attention of the President of the Board of Trade. Many of the speeches we have heard have underlined the deeper causes of our difficulties. The President of the Board of Trade began his speech with a reference to the history of the textile industry, an innovation that was not well received by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle). He went on to speak of the danger and challenge that faces Britain today.
The question is how we can maintain our customary standard of life, and improve it, as converters of raw materials, when one of those raw materials for a staple industry is grown wholly outside this country and largely in spheres beyond our political and economic influence. We shall have to adjust our minds more and more to this fundamental weakness in regard to our economic and political independence. It is a matter of

regret to us that when the late Government recognised that and embarked, for example, upon large-scale operations under the control of the Overseas Food Corporation, the difficulties and unfortunate disappointments attending the scheme met with constant criticism, nagging, and derision from the other side.

Sir H. Williams: Is the hon. Gentleman referring to cotton growing?

Mr. Houghton: Go to sleep again.
It was a valiant attempt to make a beginning with something that we shall have to tackle, notwithstanding setbacks, to secure the provision of food and raw materials within the Colonial Empire, and thus be politically and economically independent.
It is a precarious life we lead. Looking at the history of the textile industry, for example, we ask whether unemployment is the permanent condition and full employment the temporary condition. One of my constituents, speaking recently to a local newspaper, said that he had been 50 years in the cotton industry and he had not known continuous employment for more than three or four years. My own boyhood was spent among the ruins of the Nottingham lace trade. There we saw, as all textile workers and manufacturers are now seeing, the significance of the phrase, "the export of capital equipment." First, machinery to make lace was exported to the United States, and then, when the United States was self-sufficient, she clapped a prohibitive tariff on Nottingham lace and sent the Nottingham lace trade sprawling.

Sir H. Williams: If that is the case, why did the hon. Member's hon. Friends vote opposite to me when we were trying to protect the British lace industry seven years ago?

Mr. Houghton: I was not in the House then and nothing like the same attention, I am sure, was given to the difficulties of the lace industry as is now being given to the wider textile industry in this debate. [Interruption.] I wish the hon. Gentleman would contain himself. We are all fatigued. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Whether he is fatigued or not, I beg him to keep quiet. I have sympathy with hon. Gentlemen on both sides of


the House who still have speeches to make.
I was referring to the possibility that the textile industry may go through a period of contraction which other industries have gone through owing to the transfer of capacity to manufacture from this country to countries overseas. The world moves relentlessly on. As the President of the Board of Trade said in his statement, there is perhaps more to be feared from production for home consumption in countries overseas than there is from competition among other textile exporters. The enemy of the textile industry and the menace to the survival of Britain is the political and economic nationalism which is rampart throughout the world.
In my constituency, happily, I have not the same harrowing story to tell that we have heard from other Members who represent textile constituencies. There is, however, the town of Todmorden, which is something of a postal oddity because it is in the West Riding of Yorkshire but if one buys a licence at a Post Office it is written out "West Riding" and then has put on it a postal stamp which says "Todmorden, Lancs." No one desires to disturb that curious arrangement because the main industry of this town is linked with the greater cotton industry of Lancashire.
What I say about the underlying causes of the present depression is that if this is the price of re-armament, then the textile industry alone should not pay it. If this is the price of saving the £, then the textile industry alone should not pay it. There is a responsibility which the whole country has towards any particular section of it which suffers unduly and especially as a result of policies taken for national security and solvency.
There is, perhaps, such a variety of underlying causes of the present recession that it is impossible to identify one of them as the chief cause of the difficulties. So much has been said about what has led up to it that I do not propose to dwell on that any longer. I would ask whether the industry itself was as alive to its own dangers as I should have thought it would have been when, in the autumn of 1950, 447 firms were asked to tender for drill of various types, yet only 40 offers were

received, not all of which were acceptable, and which covered only 40 per cent. of the quantity needed. Why was it that those responsible for the industry failed to respond to the invitation to tender for these defence contracts when at that time the first signs of the shortening of the dates on their order books were clearly visible?
In the weaving section, in the autumn of 1950, the order books contained 30 full weeks of production. Within a year it had fallen—it had been steadily falling throughout the year—to 20 weeks of full production. In other branches of the industry there were 32½ full weeks of production on the order books at the end of 1950. That had fallen to 20½ full weeks by November, 1951. In other branches of the industry, the fall in the dates on the order books was clearly visible. Why, then, did not the industry see the red light and do something more intelligent and more effective with regard to the offer of defence contracts?
Their failure to do so meant that the Government placed orders overseas for £36 million worth of goods and, since we were obliged to honour them, by the time the recession was obvious all the commitments had been made and we could not repudiate them. Those contracts are running now and we have the distressing spectacle of imported goods coming into this country which our own mills could have been making. I think that is a reproach to those responsible for that attitude of the industry towards the defence contracts. Now we find, naturally enough, that manufacturers are most anxious to get all the defence contracts, and, if they can, to get them ahead of the gun.
A great deal has been said about Japanese competition, and I am not sure that we have got it straight yet. I understand it is not true that the Japanese competition has invaded the territories in which we had overseas markets. The entry of the Japanese into the export trade followed upon our own inability to satisfy the whole range of our overseas customers owing to the strain on our production immediately after the war. In order to satisfy some of our own customers, we have imported large quantities of Japanese grey cloth for processing and re-exporting to our own customers. There is no doubt that we have looked not only


to the Japanese but to other sources, some in Europe, for finished goods and for additions to our own resources, some for home consumption and some for re-export to our own customers. That gave Japan an entry into the export trade which she might have had difficulty in entering had we been able to supply our own customers with our own goods.

Air Commodore Harvey: Will the hon. Member allow me to interrupt him for one moment?

Mr. Houghton: I am sorry, but many other hon. Members wish to speak. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt), is already going through his speech for this afternoon on the National Health Service, which shows how near we are getting to the main business for today. However, if the hon. and gallant Member insists, I will give way.

Air Commodore Harvey: On Japanese competition, I think the hon. Member has under-rated the problem. We have proved they have copied British designs in Malaya and Africa. We were able to supply at the beginning, but Japan came in later purely on price because of their sweated labour and the 7½ an hour they paid the Japanese workers.

Mr. Houghton: I had no intention of under-rating the problem. What I thought I was doing was explaining how some of the Japanese competition came about. I heard various interpretations given which I thought were slightly inaccurate and I was putting the matter right. Many of the immediate remedies have been mentioned, and I am not going to dwell upon them again; but I must repeat from this side of the House that the President of the Board of Trade and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have a lot more thinking to do about Purchase Tax.
It is really monstrous that we should now be thinking of extending the life of a tax on consumption imposed during the war for reasons we all know, but which now will only aggravate and depress still further the problem of demand on the home market. The Government will have to reconsider their position with regard to Purchase Tax very seriously and very urgently.
They may say they cannot lift the whole of it for financial reasons. These

taxes, started for special purposes as a kind of tonic or to meet a special situation, have subsequently become a kind of drug which no Chancellor of the Exchequer can stop taking. After all, the Income Tax was a temporary tax when it first began, and as recently as 1874 Gladstone promised to abolish it if he were returned to power. But for some reason the electorate either did not believe him or were not interested in a tax of 7d. or 8d., and so they elected Disraeli, who had made no promise to abolish Income Tax and who would have broken it if he had. Income Tax has now become a permanent feature of our fiscal system.
The hon. and gallant Member for Rochdale (Lieut.-Colonel Schofield) dealt with another feature of long-term remedies which merits attention. It has been a reproach both to us, and in part to the Colonies themselves, that one-half of their cotton goods come from Japan. At a time when we ourselves are hoping to extend aid to the territories of the Colonial Empire, and when we are studying and hoping to apply the Colombo Plan, surely there should be closer co-operation between the Colonie and the mother country in their trade Otherwise, we shall find it increasingly difficult to provide resources for the developments which they want and which we want to provide.

Sir H. Williams: Does the hon. Member support the policy of the Congo Basin Treaties, which is the main cause of the trouble to which he has referred?

Mr. Houghton: I am not familiar with that. After all, one cannot be familiar with everything in the complex and confused field of international trade and fiscal policy. But if there are impediments in the way of establishing this co-operation, they should certainly he looked at again.
I come finally to the home market. There is no doubt that the present policy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is an aggravation of the difficulties of the textile industry in the home market. I do not see why right hon. and hon. Gentleman opposite should be afraid to say what I am sure they must admit, that the Chancellor's present budgetary and financial policy is deliberately designed to dampen down the level of purchasing


power at home. It has that expressed intention, so why not freely admit it? Indeed, if it has not that intention, it does not make any sense at all. I hope that the Chancellor will study the effect of his budgetary policy on home consumption and relax, wherever he can, in a direction which will save the textile industry, especially, from further difficulties.
My final point is one that was raised long, long ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White), who put it to Her Majesty's Government in this way. Here we have the first signs of serious unemployment since the war. The party opposite claim to have a policy to deal with unemployment; they claim to have a policy for full employment—and I am not going to argue about the effect of words, whether it is "full employment" or "a high and stable level of employment." They have clearly conveyed the impression to the electorate that what we mean by "full employment "they mean by "a high and stable level of employment." They claim to have the solution. What, then, is it?
What have we heard from the President of the Board of Trade in this debate which shows that Her Majesty's Government accept any responsibility for the social, economic and industrial welfare of the workers in this industry? It is not only a matter of lifting unemployment benefit; it is not a matter of adding to their monetary compensation for idleness. The Government must now accept the responsibility for starting the wheels turning again. They must do that, even if they have to adopt the most unorthodox methods of coping with this situation.
They can, for instance, ensure that home demand is stimulated by making special arrangements for the production of textiles at much lower prices than are now being paid, without damaging in any way whatever the standard of life of the workers in the industry. What we want is a "new deal" policy from right hon. Gentlemen opposite to deal with a flagging industry which needs the stimulus which the President of the Board of Trade has said can be brought to bear on an industry when the need arises. I think that either now or at some other time the Government will

have to tell the country how they propose to cope with unemployment, even when they are faced with international complications and difficulties. That responsibility they cannot shirk. We want to know what is their policy.

7.49 a.m.

Mr. Fitzroy Maclean: I hope that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) will forgive me if I do not follow him directly, but I have noticed that the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) is back in his seat, and we have had so many exchanges yesterday and today on the subject of East-West trade that I should like to say a word about that. The basic thing about the attitude of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne and the hon. Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies) is always to assume that everything that goes wrong with the relations between this country and the Soviet Union is the fault of this country.

Mr. S. Silverman: I have never done that.

Mr. Hale: It is a monstrous charge.

Mr. Maclean: It is their basic assumption.

Mr. Silverman: It is not.

Mr. Maclean: That is a matter of opinion.

Mr. Silverman: The hon. Member says that it is a matter of opinion, but has he overlooked the fact that what he is talking about is not his opinion but mine and and that I am a much better judge of my opinion than he could possibly be? I want to make it perfectly clear to him that his interpretation of my opinion is wholly mistaken. I have never said, never thought, never implied and never given anybody any justification for saying anything like what he attributes to me.

Mr. Maclean: The hon. Gentleman has certainly given people justification for thinking that.

Mr. Silverman: Only the hon. Gentleman's kind of people.

Mr. Maclean: Perhaps only our kind of people, but the hon. Gentleman has given justification.

Mr. Hale: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Maclean: I am sorry, but I cannot give way.
The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne is always asking why we do not trade more with the Soviet Union and the other Communist countries. If he will cast his mind back six or seven years—this is not a party issue; after all, until six months ago a Labour Government were in power—he will recall that everybody in this country was only too ready to do all the trade we could with the Soviet Union.

Mr. Silverman: Are we still?

Mr. Maclean: Let me discuss for one moment what we were ready to do six or seven years ago. A lot of water has passed under the bridges since then. In those days Mr. Ernest Bevin was Foreign Secretary—I do not think that the hon. Member will doubt his honesty—and he said that Left would talk to Left in comradeship and confidence. That was the atmosphere in which the relations between the two countries started at the end of the war.
Since then a lot has happened, and today we are less ready to trade with the Soviet Union because we have had a number of extremely bitter and unpleasant experiences. What has destroyed our relations with the Soviet Union and what has destroyed the possibility of extended trade with her has been the Soviet Union's deliberately hostile and aggressive policy.

Mr. Silverman: At the end of this long tirade of misrepresentation, the hon. Gentleman comes finally to the assertion that, whatever may have been true six or seven years ago, and whatever justification may be derived or not derived from that, at this moment the failure to trade is due to his lack of desire to do so.

Hon. Members: No.

Mr. Maclean: The failure to trade is due to decisions which were taken by the late Administration and are, in my view, quite rightly being continued by the present Administration.

Mr. Anthony Greenwood: In view of that, would the hon. Gentleman say what purpose he thinks the Geneva talks were intended to serve?

Mr. Maclean: The Geneva talks were intended to afford an opportunity of considering whether, without doing any

damage to our security, we could increase some aspects of our trade with Eastern Europe.

Mr. Silverman: Security?

Mr. Maclean: Earlier, we were selling them jet engines. In any case, what does the hon. Gentleman want to do? Does he think that we should sell them jet engines?

Mr. Driberg: It would save our exporting them to Switzerland anyway.

Mr. Silverman: The hon. Member for Lancaster (Mr. F. Maclean) has been here most of the night. He will by this time have appreciated that we are not discussing so much jet engines as textiles, and that we have a lot of textiles for sale. What is being suggested is that there is nothing connected with our security which need prevent us selling surplus textiles to the Soviet Union or to other Communist countries. I think that we ought to be free to do so. Does the hon. Gentleman think I am wrong or right in that desire?

Mr. Maclean: I think that in deciding the extent of our trade with the Soviet Union we have got to place, first and foremost, the security of this country. Selling textiles to the Soviet involves selling them a lot of other things and taxing other goods in return, some of which we might not want or have a lot of already. Some of the things the Soviet Union wants are goods which, in the interests of security, we should not sell. What is more, in view of the aggressive attitude of the Soviet Union and Communist countries in general, we do not want to do anything which bolsters up their economies.
What I am complaining about is that the hon. Gentleman always assumes that the reasons why our economic relations with the Soviet Union are not in a more satisfactory state today are not in any way due to the Soviet Union. The point I want to make is that the trouble started on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Mr. Silverman: On a point of order. When the hon. Gentleman said that for the first time, he could have made a mistake. I have since intervened to correct him. If he persists in repeating the original thing I have repudiated, does that


not become a deliberate misrepresentation which he is not entitled to make?

Mr. Speaker: I should not think that that follows at all. It is just possible that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Lancaster (Mr. F. Maclean) does not accept the hon. Gentleman's explanation. These are matters of debate, and we cannot conduct debates in this House on the principle of dialogue. I think that the hon. Member for Lancaster should be allowed to continue his speech.

Mr. Silverman: I think I am among the last Members of the House to be unduly sensitive about dialogue in debate, but this was not a matter of opinion. The hon. Gentleman said that I always assumed a certain matter, which he proceeded to state. I have told him I make no such assumption, and according to the rules of order the hon. Gentleman ought to accept my statement and not continue to attribute to me opinions which I have expressly repudiated.

Mr. Archer Baldwin: On a point of order. Am I not entitled to say that we are prepared to trade with the Soviet Union.

Mr. Speaker: Order. These are not points of order, but points of debate.

Mr. Maclean: If the hon. Gentleman opposite agrees with me that the state of our relations with the Soviet Union at present, and the trouble which has occurred over the last six years, is entirely the fault of the Soviet Union—

Mr. Silverman: I am sorry to interrupt again, but I am sure the hon. Member does not desire to be anything but perfectly fair. He said that I always assume that any unsatisfactory state between us and them must be our fault, and that they did nothing six or seven years ago which brings about the state of mind we adopt today. I said no such thing.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Colonel Sir Charles MacAndrew): We are not in Committee, and the hon. Member has already made one speech.

Mr. Maclean: All I say to the hon. Gentleman is that, if his attitude is not as I represented it, I am pleasantly surprised; he is coming on better than I thought.
Now I want to ask the Parliamentary Secretary, briefly, if he will re-examine a couple of suggestions for the solution to the very serious unemployment problem facing the Lancashire textile industry today. There are, of course, difficulties in the way of almost any solution. But we live in difficult times and most courses open to us at home or abroad, do present difficulties of one kind or another.
The first suggestion is that the Government should advance its orders for textiles under the re-armament programme. I was glad to hear the President of the Board of Trade give an assurance that he would endeavour to divert certain armament contracts to our textile industry in Lancashire. That may not be a complete solution, but it is bound to be of some help and, with the industry in the state it is, we cannot neglect anything which may alleviate the difficulty and stress in Lancashire. After all, if we can even tide over our difficulties temporarily, it will at least give time for the pipeline to clear itself and for something more approaching normality to be established. What the industry is suffering from is a shortage of orders. These armament orders have to be placed somewhere, and there is every advantage in placing them with our own Lancashire textile trade and doing so immediately.
The other idea I want the Parliamentary Secretary to look at again is the suggestion that new industries connected with re-armament or with the export drive should be established in the areas concerned in order to absorb as much surplus labour as possible. Again, it would not be a complete solution, and it will take some time to produce an effect, but it is bound to do some good and would be well worth while trying as part of a wider economic programme. It is true that, while there is unemployment in some industries, there is a shortage of labour in others. But labour is not mobile especially in the present housing shortage. So if labour cannot go to industry, industry must go to labour.
We on this side pride ourselves on avoiding undue rigidity in our economic policy. Here is an opportunity of showing foresight and flexibility in a way which would benefit everybody concerned.

8.5 a.m.

Mr. Joseph T. Price: I have had the privilege of sitting through this rather long debate, and I believe that most hon. Members who have done the same have been happy to do so because the House recognises that we have a great responsibility towards the people who send us here and who are being hit by the economic blizzard which has hit the cotton industry.
I am proud of the fact that I was born in the finest county in England, Lancashire, and that I represent a Lancashire constituency with a long and turbulent history of industrial trouble of one kind or another. It is a district founded on the two basic principles of British commercial supremacy, as we knew them in Victorian days and before the 1914–18 war.
The two opening speakers in the debate tackled their job with a sense of responsibility, and a serious and almost sombre attitude towards the problem that confronts the textile industry. One or two of the remarks by the President of the Board of Trade were particularly significant. He said, quite correctly, that the history of the industry was characterised by fierce individualism. During my life I have witnessed the vicissitudes of the industry at close quarters, I have read many books about it, and I have seen families taking their Sunday clothes back to the pawnbrokers on Monday morning—even the clothes that the children had been wearing in Sunday School.
I have seen all kinds of strife and struggle which have arisen from the twin troubles of coal and cotton. Nothing better typifies this industry, streaked as it is with individualism, than the old play, "Clogs to clogs," with which many hon. Members will be familiar. I was pleased that in the latter part of his speech the President of the Board of Trade mentioned that he did not propose for the time being to grant further licences for the import of grey cloth from Japan. I am willing to concede the point advanced by hon. Members on both sides that we cannot merely sterilise the economic activities of the great Japanese people, who have a rapidly multiplying population. It would not only be stupid economically to do that, but it would be immoral from a standpoint worthy of any civilised man or woman.
The problem is not merely the wobbling or slipping of our activities in the textile field at the moment: it is part of the problem of the great upheaval of world economy which is interlocked at every phase with armaments and other things which have upset the world for two generations. The philosophies of hon. Members opposite spring from a different source from ours, though we nevertheless concede that they are sincere; but I was surprised when the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne), I think it was, said, perhaps in an unguarded moment or in an interpolation in the thread of his argument that perhaps this recession in the textile industry of which we are complaining is a symbol or symptom of the decline of the capitalist civilisation. I was pleased to observe a gleam of light from those benches. It is indeed my belief.
Sidney Webb, the great sociologist, wrote as long ago as 1923 his book, "Capitalist Civilisation," in which he gave an accurate picture of the state of affairs existing today. One of the most surprising things about economic theory, as I have read it in the last 20 years, is that most of it has been wrong. Most of the expert economic information given to Chancellors of the Exchequer and statesmen has been proved wrong by events. Listening to the President of the Board of Trade and the hon. Member for Louth, I thought of a passage in Sidney Webb that is not inapposite. It is his reference to cosmic inspectors. He says:
Imagine the report of the spirit expert in scientific consumption, deputed by the Government of All Good to investigate progress towards sanity of the inmates of the planetary lunatic asylum: 'I cannot agree with my colleague, the inspector of scientific production, that the inhabitants of the earth are showing any approach to sanity'.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I fail to understand how this is connected with the Consolidated Fund Bill.

Mr. Price: With respect, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I am arguing that the economic disturbance that has given rise to the debate is only a symptom or a symbol of a much deeper malaise that has afflicted the whole world and with which Sidney Webb was dealing.

Sir W. Darling: The hon. Gentleman said economic advisers had always been


wrong. Was not Sidney Webb economic adviser?

Mr. Price: I disagree; he was a sociologist.
If I may complete the quotation:
'My colleague tells me that in the production of most commodities and services they are showing signs of increasing intelligence in the use of materials and the organisation of manual labour and brain work. In the consumption of wealth, they seem to be going from bad to worse. Former generations produced less, but what they did produce they seemed to me to have consumed more intelligently'.
The thought that haunts the minds of people in the cotton areas of Lancashire and the North is that there should be any risk of returning to the bad old days.
Reference has been made to the consequences which flow from the policy of this country. Maybe it is not a policy in which we have had a free choice but under which we have exported capital goods from the textile machinery workshops of Britain to the far corners of the earth. Not only have we seen it as part of the export drive, but we have seen technicians and skilled operatives launch new industries in lands where we had undisputed export markets.
It must be obvious to any thinking man or woman that we are faced today with a tremendous paradox. We have increased with tremendous strides the means of transport by land, sea, and air at a speed never dreamed of by H. G. Wells; communications have been perfected to a higher degree than were dreamed of a short time ago, but, at the same time, the natural development of economic intercourse between the nations of the world is being strangled and frustrated by the stupidity of man.
I know this is not an occasion to give a philosophic twist to this question. No doubt the people listening to this debate are expecting us to produce a remedy and a more direct approach to it. I would never lend any advocacy of mine to the kind of propaganda which would suggest that this trouble is one for which we can find a simple remedy or a simple formula. The difficulty of the cotton trade is the difficulty of relieving the

tension that exists in the world on the economic and military plane.
I urge all those who are entrusted with the conduct of Her Majesty's Government to pay increased attention to those pledges they have given on international intercourse and the relief of international tension. It is sometimes imagined that a country which consumes 75 per cent. of its textile articles in the home market can, by a stroke of the pen, or by some magic, put itself in the position of forgoing the results of the export drive. I do not believe that. I do not believe that the state of affairs which has existed in the last three years in the textile industry can go on.
When I look at the figures for the balance of trade in all textile materials—the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) referred to the importation of raw materials—I find that in the last three years, in the matter of textile materials, all piece goods, yarns, fabrics of various categories, only in 1949 was there a small favourable balance for this country. There was a balance of plus £20 million in 1949. The following year there was an adverse balance of £26 million, and in 1951 an adverse balance of £145 million. Obviously, that state of affairs cannot continue.
I hope that when he replies the President will tell us some of his ideas about the financial structure of the industry. From practical knowledge of Manchester and of cotton manufacturers, I can say that speculation has been the curse of the cotton industry for generations. I have seen families in Oldham of the "Clogs to clogs" variety, who made money in one generation and lost it in the next. I have seen them trying to give away shares on which there was a remaining 10s. to be paid, and I have seen homes sold up to pay the balance of shares.
I know something of the machinery of speculation, the short selling, the rigging, the bolstering, the hammering and the switching of the market, to use the conventional terms of speculators. I know the results of booms and slumps, bankruptcies and unemployment which has resulted from the speculative history of the cotton industry. Oldham in the 1930's was a typical example, and I would be bitterly opposed to the re-open-


ing of the "spot" market which would give an impetus to the speculative urge. This is no time to re-open speculation and I hope that the President will have something to say about that.
In case I should be charged with not having made a constructive speech, but merely a critical speech, or even an historical survey, I would add my support to some of the practical remedies suggested which, however, are only "ambulance" remedies to deal with some of the minor problems of the present period; the speeding of defence orders, the D scheme and the removal of Purchase Tax. I am tempted to support the argument that even if it were but for a temporary period, it might be a good thing to remove Purchase Tax from textiles. What is the use of the Treasury having an income from Purchase Tax if another Department of State has to pay out millions of pounds in unemployment benefit?
I plead with the right hon. Gentleman with all the sincerity I can command that urgent consideration be given to the question of bringing new industries into the stricken areas which are now feeling the blast, and not for the first time. If the erection of a few buildings, even if it meant the transferance of the raw materials and labour which might be required, is essential to put some new form of work into these areas, the Government will be well justified in taking that course.
I ask the Minister, even at this late stage, to reconsider the wisdom of exporting our specialist machinery to foreign countries, and I would ask for earnest consideration of all that was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) about the implementation of the Colombo Plan.
In the final analysis there are hundreds of millions of human beings in this world, who, though needing cotton goods in the form of shirts, loin cloths, sarongs, and so on, are too poor to make that demand on the trade of Lancashire. Whatever its political colour may be, an agency that seeks, by developing trade and bringing about confidence between man and man of different colours and different creeds and promoting the brotherhood of man through channels of trade is doing the work which in this day and generation we most need.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Mr. Strauss.

Mr. Anthony Greenwood: I rise on a point of order of some constitutional importance. We are discussing this morning the Consolidated Fund Bill, the purpose of which is to pay out to Her Majesty certain sums of money—rather more than £132 million. It is, incidentally, a little surprising that in a debate of such economic importance the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself should not be present.
What I am raising is this: it is one of the immemorial privileges of this House that when consideration is given to payment of money to the Sovereign, hon. Members should be entitled to petition for the redress of grievances. That is what hon. Members have been doing throughout yesterday and this morning. There are still several hon. Members who wish to bring grievances to the attention of the Government.
My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) represents a constituency more severely affected by the slump in the cotton trade than any other town in the country. But when my hon. Friend and other hon. Members rise, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade rises and calmly tries to reply to the debate. I think it is an intolerable abuse of the privileges of this House. The hon. and learned Gentleman is not here as a Conservative leader. He is sitting on the Front Bench as one of Her Majesty's Ministers and we are entitled to bring grievances to his attention and to have a reply to the points we raise. I beg him not to rise at this stage and conclude the debate as far as he is concerned, but to let hon. Members have a full discussion of their grievances.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The only point of order that arises as far as I am concerned is that when a Minister rises I call him in preference to other hon. Members, and I called him. As to the suggestion of who I am going to call next, as a matter of fact the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) was not in my mind.

Mr. Driberg: Further to that point. May we, in that case, through you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary not to intervene at this


stage in view of the representations made by my, hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) and in view of the fact that a few of us have been sitting here all night, as, indeed, has the Parliamentary Secretary, and have been rising each time to catch your eye? So far nobody who represents a constituency in southern England, where there are also textile interests, has been fortunate enough to catch your eye.

Mr. Hale: Further to that point of order. I am obliged to my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) but I have not endeavoured to thrust myself upon the Chair, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, except in the normal process of rising 36 times in succession, because it has never been my practice to make suggestions to the Chair, put my name on a list or make a request to the Chair to be called. But if I am called, there are one or two points I should like to put with equal courtesy to the Parliamentary Secretary, who has been so courteous throughout this debate.
I represent the greatest cotton-spinning town in the world and neither I nor my colleague the hon. Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Horobin), on the other side of the House, has been fortunate enough to catch the eye of the Chair, although my colleague opposite was rising until a late hour this morning. The figures of unemployment in Oldham are now 4,000 totally unemployed and 6,000 partly unemployed. If the Parliamentary Secretary rises now, and if I am fortunate enough to catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I shall have no answer to the points I have to put. I am sure that with his usual courtesy the Parliamentary Secretary wishes to meet the desires of the House. I gather that not very many people are wishing to catch your eye at the moment, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: We have had a long, interesting and I think, useful debate. I would hope that it would end in the same amicable spirit as it has been conducted. There are already quite a lot of speeches to reply to. I think that at a fairly early stage now it would be right for the Government to make some reply to the points which have been put, but I am anxious not to shut out the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale),

or anyone else. If hon. Members feel that in a reasonably short space of time it might be possible for them to consider that their case was adequately put, I am quite sure my hon. and learned Friend would be quite happy to wait for a short interval to allow any points to be put, and then he could rise to reply.

8.36 a.m.

Mr. T. Driberg: I should like to start by expressing my appreciation to the President of the Board of Trade and the Parliamentary Secretary for their great courtesy in giving way a little further and enabling some of us, who do not have their good fortune of being able to intervene whenever they want to, to do so now. So far as I am concerned, I am afraid I cannot guarantee that the rest of the debate will be as entirely amicable as the President of the Board of Trade seems to think it has all been up to now. Perhaps he thinks that because he has not heard quite the whole debate. I will, however, endeavour to make my remarks reasonably brief; though I see that we are now reinforced by a number of hon. Members who have had the advantage of a night's sleep and have come back very early in the morning to show how interested they are in the textile trade.
I am rather sorry that the hon. Member for Lancaster (Mr. F. Maclean) has left us, because if he had still been here I should have tried to apply to him the technique that he applied to my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman). The hon. Member for Lancaster was so palpably embarrassed by one straight question which my hon. Friend asked him that I should like to have challenged him by saying that his "basic assumption" is that all East-West trade is a bad thing in itself and that the export to the Iron Curtain countries even of textiles must endanger our national security. I have no doubt that to put it in that way would be as unfair to the hon. Member as he was unfair to my hon. Friend; but unfortunately he is not here to say whether or not that is his basic assumption, and so I am entitled to assume, from the things he said, that it is.
I should like to urge him to be a little less timid in his approach to this problem of East-West trade. I would urge


him to emulate the courage, enterprise and common sense of his one hon. Friend who is going to attend the forthcoming Economic Conference in Moscow. I must also tell the Parliamentary Secretary—if I may have his attention for a second—that I think that the President of the Board of Trade and Her Majesty's Government have not treated with sufficient seriousness the prospect of doing some real business at this forthcoming Economic Conference in Moscow. Whatever view Her Majesty's Government may take of the motives inspiring the organisers of the conference, I should have thought that it was at least worth attending. I should have thought that it should be taken at least as seriously as the Foreign Secretary, quite properly, has taken the recent Soviet Note. That has not been dismissed as mere propaganda or as not worth answering; it has been answered seriously. The Board of Trade should take equally seriously the possibility of some good coming out of the conference.
I am inclined to agree with those hon. Members on both sides of the House who have referred repeatedly in the course of this night's debate to Purchase Tax on textiles and who have urged that there should be some modification of it or that it should be abolished altogether on textiles. One hon. Member represented that it should be abolished on Lancashire textiles. I do not think he really meant only Lancashire textiles, because if it were done for one group it should be done for all.
Incidentally, in one infinitesimal branch of the textile industry—I wonder if I might again have the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary. I hate to keep on interrupting him when he is talking to a colleague, but it is most unfortunate for me. I do not wish to be discourteous to the Parliamentary Secretary, but every time I reach a point on which I should like particularly to have his attention, he is unfortunately otherwise engaged—if there is any reconsideration of Purchase Tax on textiles, I hope that he will consider seriously—I know that he will personally be sympathetic to this—the question of relieving of Purchase Tax tapestry of a particularly fine quality which is made at only one studio in Scotland. Unless there is some Purchase Tax relief on that product of the particular workshop

or studio, it will probably be impossible to hang in the very interesting new Coventry Cathedral the tremendous tapestries which the architect envisages for the east end of that building. I am quite sure that the Parliamentary Secretary, with his interest in the arts, will appreciate the point of what I am saying, because that cathedral tapestry can only be made in this one workshop. Admittedly, that is one tiny, non-utilitarian aspect of the subject, but I thought I would mention it while I was on the question of Purchase Tax.
I remember discussing the whole question of Purchase Tax once with Sir Stafford Cripps when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He explained to me that he took the view that both Purchase Tax and post-war credits were two of the best instruments that any Chancellor could keep up his sleeve, so to speak, against any risk of a sudden deflationary situation. It seems to me that, in view of all that we have heard tonight, in view of the obvious grave unemployment that is arising in this industry, there may be said to be a functionally localised deflationary situation, which might appropriately be met by some Purchase Tax relief.
Furthermore, one of the orthodox defences of the maintenance of Purchase Tax is that it helps to divert or to force goods from the domestic to the export market. Of course, that argument does not apply when, unfortunately, export markets have very largely dried up. It is even necessary in the interests of the industry to stimulate domestic consumption, and that is surely another reason for considering the abolition of Purchase Tax.
Although, as is quite natural, hon. Members from Lancashire have very nearly monopolised this debate, I was glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), my hon. Friend the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White), and one or two other hon. Members reminded us that there are textile interests and textile workers in other parts of the country also. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock spoke for, I think he said, 100,000 textile workers in Scotland.
I myself represent a constituency in Essex in which the textile industry, and


particularly the production of super-fine textiles for export, is traditionally of great importance, though, of course, not on such a great scale as in Lancashire. I can assure the Parliamentary Secretary that we are just as worried in Braintree by short time and unemployment as my other hon. Friends who represent constituencies further North. We are sorry, quite frankly, that the Government are not so worried as we are, and we were sorry to see that the Prime Minister had denied that the situation was serious at all. That was a most extraordinary reply that he gave on Monday to the hon. Member for Kilmarnock. Because there has been some disposition in some quarters of the House to minimise what the Prime Minister said, I will read his actual words:
It is not true that serious unemployment in Britain has arisen directly out of the decisions of other Commonwealth Governments. …
I think that the hon. Member for Kidderminster showed himself at variance with his leader here: in some parts of his speech he contradicted flatly what the Prime Minister said on Monday. The Prime Minister continued:
or from any other cause."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th March, 1952; Vol. 498, c. 7.]
That is a comprehensive and curious statement by the Prime Minister. He says that it is not true that serious unemployment in Britain has arisen "from any cause." In other words, it is not true that serious unemployment has arisen in Britain. True, he adds that there is "anxiety" about the textile industry; but that only shows what a curious and self-contradictory answer this was. There is anxiety about something not serious. It is typical of the cloud-cuckoo-land, ringing with fantasies and phrases of the most grandiloquent kind, in which the Prime Minister lives, but it is not illuminating to those who think that there is a serious problem in the textile industry.
Some hours ago we had an interesting passage about the respective attitude of the two sides of this House to the problem of unemployment; and we dug up again that old argument about "full employment" or "a high and stable level of employment." The Parliamentary Secretary took it so seriously that he intervened once or twice, in great excitement,

to document one single occasion on which a Labour Party spokesman had used the phrase "a high and stable level of employment." There is considerable force in the question already addressed to the Government on what they mean by that phrase. Is what we have got in the textile industry at this moment "a high and stable level of employment"? At what point does it become a low and unstable level? I realise that the phrase dates from a Coalition White Paper and that all parties were committed to it and to the White Paper at the end of the war, but the simple truth about that is, of course, that the Labour Government after the war did very much better than the Coalition Government thought would be possible.
One hon. Gentleman opposite said that the famous figure of 8 per cent. given in that White Paper was "the mere assumption of a Government actuary." But he presumably assumed the figure that he thought likeliest. That Government actuary was assuming that the likeliest level of unemployment consistent with the maintenance of what was called a "high and stable level of employment" would be 8 per cent., which might mean something like 1,250,000 or 1,500,000 unemployed. If that number of unemployed is what is meant by "a high and stable level of employment" according to hon. Gentlemen opposite—because it is a phrase which they still use—we shall know what to expect, and the country ought to have known what to expect at the last Election.
It really comes down once more to a question of ends and means. I have never questioned the sincerity of individual Conservatives of my acquaintance who say, "Honestly, we do not want to return to the bad old days of mass unemployment; we are with you in wanting as full employment as possible. Some of the bankers and economists, I know, 'talk a bit tough' sometimes, and there may be some reasons, according to some economists, for wanting a measure of unemployment. But we really don't want it." As I say, I accept their sincerity when they say that they want this desirable end of full employment; but it is no use willing the end unless one also wills the means; and it is here that even the best intentioned Conservative runs away from the means. Here is a good


test. This deplorable position in our textile industry is the first real test that Her Majesty's Government have had of their ability to maintain what may be called, unequivocally and without quibbling, "a high and stable level of employment." I hope that the Government will come through the test successfully, for their own sake and especially for the sake of those people who are already suffering and will suffer more acute hardship if the Government do not pass the test.
It is a cruel coincidence that this hardship of substantial unemployment should come upon our people just at this moment of sharply rising prices and a sharply rising cost of living. It fits in alarmingly with the general pattern of the Budget—a Budget which has illustrated vividly one of the Gospel texts which I have always found the hardest to underestand: "To him that hath shall be given, and from him that bath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have"; for it is a Budget which makes the rich a little richer, and the poor a little poorer—[Interruption.] Oh, yes, it is quite true. It has been worked out by perfectly independent economists, and their researches show that the net effect of the Budget, allowing for increased family allowances, reduced food subsidies, and Income Tax reliefs, is that if you are a married couple with one child, earning an income of £300 a year—that is, about £6 a week—you will be £12 a year worse off; but if you are a married couple with one child, receiving an income of £2,500 a year, you will be £50 a year better off.
This Government is, in fact, doing what the Labour government did for six years—re-distributing wealth; but it is re-distributing it backwards: backwards out of the goods and services provided for the poorest sections of our community, into the overloaded pockets from which wealth was being gradually, and almost painlessly, extracted.
This unemployment, coming at a time when the cost of living is being sent up deliberately for the poorest people, is indeed a cruel coincidence. Hon. Members opposite may talk of Income Tax reliefs, but it is little use talking of reliefs to people who are so poor that they do not pay any Income Tax at all. As I say,

this unemployment at a time of rising prices fits into the Budget pattern; for when you analyse the Budget, unemployment is the Budget's answer to the Budget's own inflationary tendency. That is why this Budget has been correctly described as both inflationary and deflationary.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock that there is little hope of any effective international action by this Government. I have referred already to the impending Moscow conference, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) in what he said about China. When he was interrupted by an hon. Member on the Liberal bench behind him with a completely invalid comparison between the present and the pre-war situation in China, he might have replied that there could be no comparison because of the industrialisation that has gone on pretty fast, the rising standard of living, and the fact that the Chinese have now a Government less corrupt than the old Government, all of which make a totally different situation.
Japan has been extensively mentioned, and I was glad to hear the hon. Member for Preston, North (Mr. Amery) refer to statistics about Pakistan which I had intended to quote if he had not done so. They are extremely revealing and show the first impact of Japanese recovery. It is clear that we are only at the beginning of Japanese industrial recovery and its effect on our traditional markets in the Far East and South-East Asia. That recovery has been sponsored, financed, and deliberately encouraged by America, on a traditional capitalist basis.
What is happening now to our export trade only goes to show how right the Labour Party were in 1945, when we said that it was essential that the ex-enemy countries and devastated areas should be rebuilt on a Socialist basis, with a high level of social security and decent wage standards—not only on merit, as it were, but for the strictly utilitarian reason that, if that advice had been taken, and we had been able to pursuade the Americans of its wisdom, neither in Japan nor in Germany should we now be suffering from unfair competition based on sweated labour. As it is, the welfare of the British people and


Commonwealth trade are suffering from the Oriental torture of death by a thousand cuts—Tory cuts at home, cuts from American economic imperialism abroad.
I agree that there is no hope of effective international action by this Government, because the kindest thing one can say about them in respect of the Commonwealth Finance Ministers' Conference is "They failed." It may be that a Labour Government would have failed. All one can say of the Labour Government's record on Commonwealth matters is that it was remarkably successful on the whole. So far, the Conservative Government has an unsuccessful record. One hon. Member—I think it was the hon. Member for Kidderminster—stated as a fact apparently known privately to him that the serious matter of the action taken by Australia, and taken within her rights, was not discussed in advance at the conference. He went on to imply that it could not have been discussed without some infringement of Australia's sovereignty and self-government.
Surely that is nonsense. Sovereign States often discuss matters of mutual interest, and whatever decision is taken by one or other, or by all jointly, the matters can be thrashed out without infringement of sovereignty. I could not understand that suggestion; I hope that there is no truth in it. If the effect of the Australian Government's action upon our export of textiles was not discussed, then we have to say of the Government not merely that it failed, but that it did not try hard enough. If they did not discuss that matter, it was a gross dereliction of duty.
I should like to put in one word for someone who is perhaps not a particularly popular figure tonight, namely, the primary producer, because although it is important that Lancashire should get cotton at a reasonable price, it is also important, on a broader view, that the primary producer of cotton in the Sudan, or elsewhere, should not be starved. Those who have been to the Sudan know how precariously its economy is balanced on cotton exports. These have been extremely lucrative in the last few years because of the enormously inflated world price of cotton. The world price of cotton is falling. We do not know how

far it will fall. I hope it will not reach slump depths, for that would mean a poor look-out not only for the Sudan and its economy as a whole, but in particular for that magnificent Gezira scheme which has been so successful in recent years. So I would make a plea for the primary producer in any international discussion or negotiations on which the Government may be embarking.
Finally, however, I come back unashamedly, as most hon. Members have done during this long debate, to my own constituency. In the black years before the war we were comparatively fortunate. We never knew the worst kind of mass unemployment in towns like Braintree, Witham and Maldon; but now they are beginning to feel the shadow of unemployment and short time. Factories such as Courtauld's at Braintree, at Bocking, and at Halstead—just over the border in the Chancellor of the Exchequer's own constituency—are working only three days a week. The first two expendable classes of workers—the married women and the Poles—have been sacked. The married women are turned out and sent back to their homes just when the cost of living is going up and they most need the bit of extra that they were earning at the factory.
What is going to happen to the Poles? Maybe it is right that they should be sacked before our own people. The Parliamentary Secretary has taken a personal interest in the past in the fate of refugees from Eastern Europe and other countries: can he tell us what is going to happen to the Poles, the first and most expendable class of textile workers? Will they be sent down the mines? Will the miners have them down the mines, if they will not have Italians? Are they to be sent back to Poland? Surely not. But I hope that they are not going to become chronic unemployed, drifting from café to bar, living on National Assistance, getting into gangs. There are thousands of these Poles involved, and in view of his former interest in them I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary may say a word about them.
In my constituency, as in all others, it is the young people in particular who are most aghast at this strange phenomenon, quite unknown in their experience, of a factory suddenly shutting for half the week. They cannot think what it means


or how it is allowed to happen. It is like a visitation of God. It is incredible to them because they have grown up under a wartime Coalition Government and under a Labour Government, under both of which full employment was just a matter of course. It is a devastating experience. Those of them who voted Conservative at the last Election are unlikely to do so again; but I most sincerely hope, for the welfare of the country and of millions of our folk, that the Government, though Conservative, will successfully solve this very serious situation.

9.7 a.m.

Mr. Leslie Hale: When I first went to Oldham in the 1930s my first recollection of the first day I got to know the town is of counting the number of shops that were locked up, closed down, and boarded up in the main streets. I counted just over 90 from Mump's Bridge to the market place, which is the main street. Nothing could give one a more graphic impression of the results of prolonged unemployment on a town. I do not now want to recall these matters in any sense of bitterness, but I do want to recall the possibility we are facing and to remind the House of the urgency of the present situation. In those days ivy was growing on the walls of many mills that had changed hands for vast sums, had decayed, and were then to be bought for a trifling sum.
Today, in Oldham there are 4,000 people totally unemployed. The card room section of the Textile Workers' Association, one of the principal local trade unions, is paying out in benefit to the totally unemployed today £1,000 a week. In addition, there are 6,000 on what is called short time; and in many instances short time is a very euphemistic term. In a rather exceptional case in one mill, people are working three days in five weeks, but there is nothing exceptional today in working three days a fortnight.
I was very moved by what the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr. Driberg) said about this. It has come almost as a cataclysm. It has come after a few forebodings and a week or two of apprehension in more well-informed circles, but it has come so swiftly that I am a little

surprised that so little attention has been paid today to the causes of it. I do not want to bring controversial matters into the discussion and I want to make a few constructive suggestions. But there has been an air of delicacy in discussing this matter.
We had to wait until the hon. Member for Preston North (Mr. J. Amery) spoke before we had a frank statement as to what the primary cause is. The hon. Member said, "We cannot have guns and butter, and we think we ought to have guns because guns are necessary to deal with the present international situation." No one discounts that as a reasonable argument, or under-estimates the threat of the situation. No one is trying to make capital out of the fact.
We have had to face a dilemma and nearly all the countries facing it have done so under pressure from the United States, with a plan presented to them under pressure from a friendly country, a very great nation, and one where I have a number of friends. But she is a nation which seems to misunderstand completely the economy of Europe and does not realise how difficult it is to emulate her in this matter.
That is my first point. My second point is that we have listened to speeches from the other side of the House advocating economic planning, systems of controls, priorities, quotas, bulk-purchase agreements with the Argentine and other countries based on textiles, and so on. Hon. Members opposite have been converted. I do not want to make capital out of it. It is a commonplace in Parliamentary history for an Opposition sometimes to sow a few wild oats in the days of its Parliamentary youth and then to acquire a sense of responsibility when it takes office, but nearly every suggestion from the other side of the House has been based on some sort of Socialist planning. I am going to make it plain that perhaps there has not been so much said from this side of the House with regard to Socialist planning on the full scale that the present situation demands.
Another point which has constantly been made in the debate should be replied to. It was the hon. Lady for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle) who said—and was fiercely challenged on it—that this was part of the Chancellor's policy. It is true that unemployment, or the first signs


of unemployment, started before the present Government took office. We are not challenging that. The recession came as the armament programme developed all over Europe, but I am surprised that hon. Members did not understand the implication behind what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said when he presented his Budget.
We had a very surprising speech from the hon. Member for Skipton (Mr. Drayson), who said that his method of dealing with the crisis in the textile industry was this: "Rates of interest are too high. I approve of what the Chancellor is doing generally but it is hitting the textile industry hard. Let us therefore have an interest rebate for the textile industry as compensation, to be administered by the Inland Revenue and taxation people."
His other point was that restriction of credit was all right but it was hitting the textile industry hard so let there be special exemption from restriction of credit by granting a long-term credit to the industry for the purchase of raw materials. That is a surprising criticism of the Budget speech. Although restriction of credit is healthy it is hitting other industries a good deal more and it is likely to produce unemployment and other bad effects within a period of time.
The other point in the Chancellor's statement was that he purported to follow the practice set out in the White Paper of 1944 and budget for a heavy surplus to equate consumer supply with consumer demand. It has been common ground throughout the debate that the principal recession is in the home market and that it is there that consumer demand has gone. What, therefore, is the use of the Chancellor saying "I have equated, on a nicely balanced financial basis of £600 million, consumer demand with consumer supply" when in this vital industry there appears to be no consumer demand at all, and when it is very obvious that a great crisis is being faced?
I did make one intervention about the Congo Basin Treaties. I want to be blunt about this, because Oldham people are quite capable of thinking internationally, having handled international trade for long enough. I have no use for hon. Members on either side of the House who talk about tariffs and preferences

and beating the Japanese and so on. We shall do no more good to humanity by driving down the standards of life of other people than has been done by the cold war which is being continued on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
Everyone knows that in regard to the Congo Basin Treaties the position is difficult. There were grants of land made at the time and rights were granted in perpetuity. But the Anglo-French Treaty was denounced in 1936, and I do not think that vis à vis some participating countries it could now be argued that Germany, who has lost her African Colonies and been defeated in two wars, is in the same position to argue about her rights in Africa as she was in 1884, when the main Treaties were signed.
My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon referred to the Gezira scheme, which I have no doubt the Parliamentary Secretary will regard as a very important scheme indeed. We have had immense development in the Sudan, and I still entertain the hope that when the Sudan secures her independence she may still come into the British Commonwealth of Nations.
But if we are to have a planned policy in the future at all, which will permit us to be independent of both East and West, we have to tackle as early as possible the job of planning an area which makes us completely self-supporting. One of the most vital things in that connection, perhaps the most vital, is the increasing of our cotton productivity in Africa and in those areas to which the Congo Basin Treaties relate. I suggest that that is absolutely vital and I commend it urgently to the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary.
As has already been said, we are facing a situation of fantastic economic complexity. We have inflation and deflation running at the same time, not, as has been said, for the first time; we have had this situation before. We are now in a position in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer finds himself forced to encourage both processes simultaneously. Inflation is being forced in the armaments and heavy goods section of industry by the programme of £1,500 million. Appalled by the consequences, the Chancellor finds himself endeavouring to apply deflationary remedies to the consumer market


which are bearing very heavily on consumer production and demand.
I agree with those who urge that the Purchase Tax should be taken off textiles. That seems to be the obvious immediate step. It is quite impossible to access what effect that would have, but no one would suggest that it would completely solve the problem, or get near to solving it. And, of course, such orders as could be placed on a military basis would not touch the fringe of the problem.
There are one or two things which could be done. A number of people have suggested a Commonwealth economic conference. This time, if we have one, I hope there will be an agenda, and that people will remember to discuss Commonwealth matters while they are meeting. I suggest that the time has come for a world economic conference and an attempt to solve the world economic problems; in the solution of which I believe we could solve the ideological problems too. Certainly the effort is worth the making.
I say with respect that the tendency of the Chancellor to over-estimate and over-emphasise the gravity of our external situation is one of the causes of the lack of confidence which resulted in the stopping of buying. Whatever our external situation, our Budgetary situation in terms of finance to be raised by taxation and Revenue is certainly a sound one, yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer has budgeted for a surplus of £600 million. That £600 million is to stop buying. If the Parliamentary Secretary, who is now inheriting Socialist remedies of some kind or another and is adopting them in Statutory Instruments day by day is prepared to be broad-minded, I put to him quite seriously what he ought to do.
We have school meals and we have subsidised meals at schools; there was a time when we had free meals at schools. If the Parliamentary Secretary wants to solve the immediate problem of the textile industry for twelve months let us have free clothes at schools. Let us have a decent outfit available at every elementary and secondary school for every pupil there. We could pay for it out of the Budget surplus and still have an enormous surplus left. Let us start on a real Socialist remedy by creating demand in terms of need and not in terms of purchasing power.
When we have done that, may I come then to the main solution? We know the circumstances of the world in which we live. We know that this cold war—whatever be the measure of responsibility on either side—is frustrating economic development and prosperity in every country in the world. If it be true, as many hon. Members think, that the people of the U.S.S.R. or the leaders of the people are deliberately fomenting this cold war and deliberately making a challenge to bring about this situation, then the plain answer is that if that be their policy they are winning battles every day and gaining victories every day, as the economic position of the N.A.T.O. Powers begins to disintegrate and these cracks in our industrial and economic life appear.
I know that on certain terms a disarmament conference today is a hopeless proposition. If there is not a breakdown on atomic inspection, it can break down on the question of half a battleship being equal to a regiment and so on. But we are committed to that principle of world development and the development of the backward areas of the world which President Truman enunciated in the fourth point of his plan. And Marshal Stalin has written widely on this subject. In his earlier years he was the author of a great contribution to racial theory and understanding.
The summoning of an economic conference today on the basis of a concerted attempt to reach agreement on world development will, of course, involve automatic disarmament of a sensible kind; because if one allocates steel to a bridge or dam on the Congo one cannot allocate it for tanks in Europe; and as one increases allocations for that kind of purpose so one automatically disarms.
We have to recognise that the state of the world in which we live is utterly intolerable, a world in which 60 per cent. of the people are starving, suffering from malnutrition, intestinal disease, poverty and the complete negation of the values of life. We believe that at this moment, for the first time in history, we can battle against these world problems in conjunction with our allies across the sea and make our contribution on the basis of giving the world what it needs instead of in terms of arms which the peoples of


the world do not want and which deprive them of their needs.
I believe that the one way of resolving this world difficulty, which will otherwise go on until there is an inevitable conflagration, is along those lines. Those who participate in that effort can at once win the respect of the world. In that way, by means of the great Colombo Plan, administered under new authorities like the T.V.A., in the Nile, the Congo and in the Yangtse, we could turn the ideals of mankind to new conceptions of economic life and to new conceptions of international planning. There would, of course, be ample outlet for all available goods for years to come.
But perhaps most of all it would mean that we should be able, through our great constructional engineering genius, to supply, on a full employment basis in Britain and Western Europe, the needs of the whole of these vast under-developed areas for a century or so to come. It would mean there would be an opportunity for our sons and daughters to seek employment in a life that was worth while, and to go out as research technicians, veterinary surgeons, experts in insectisides and the like, bringing health, amelioration, psychological and educational development to areas which have been deprived of them for so long. [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear hear."] I wish I knew the name of the hon. Gentleman who is disposed to be so facetious about these people's suffering. We have had during this debate one or two similar demonstrations. If I knew the name of the hon. Member, I would immortalise it by repeating it for the record in HANSARD.
As people are disposed to be a little facetious, may I say that the case I am putting is not my case but the case put by President Truman in his fourth point. It is the case which has been put by Lord Boyd Orr, the former Chairman of the Food and Agricultural Organisation, and by Josue de Castro, his successor. It is the case which has been put by the United Nations organisation in their extremely able report, documented by Arthur Lewis, in which he envisages a net increase in the standard of living in the whole of the backward areas as 2 per cent. per week for 25 years and the cost as 14,000 million dollars externally and 5,000 million dollars internally, per year.
At this early hour I am not putting up a case that has not been thoroughly documented and considered. I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that if he is determined to grapple with this problem he cannot do it on the basis of taking a farthing candle to light up the cliffs of Dover; but only on the basis of recreating a real demand and re-creating new markets and of development on the basis of bringing a new hope to this great industry, which has a right to the fullest security, and continued full employment.

Mr. Nally: On a point of order. Perhaps I could have your guidance, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Is it quite clearly understood that when the Parliamentary Secretary has spoken, the mere fact that he has spoken does not rob any of us of our rights to continue this debate?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Certainly not.

Mrs. Braddock: On a point of order. Mr. Deputy-Speaker, could you tell me why it is that I am the last individual on the back benches on this side of the House who has not been called? I have sat in the House since 1.50 a.m. and I have risen on every possible occasion. Is there some particular prejudice about this matter? My constituency and a matter relating to it have been mentioned by almost every speaker, and I protest at the attitude that has been adopted in deliberately keeping me out of this debate.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I am quite certain that no one will keep the hon. Lady deliberately out of the debate. If she will bide her patience for a short time—I know she has been here all night—I shall certainly call her.

Mrs. Braddock: Am I going to be debarred from the privilege of putting forward certain matters which I think should be answered and not have the opportunity of hearing the Parliamentary Secretary replying to me? I am in exactly the same position as every other hon. Member and I contend, however unparliamentary it may seem, that I have been deliberately ignored in this debate. [HON. MEMBERS: "Order."] I take exception to it. I have sat here without moving out of the House at all since 1.50 a.m. this morning. I have not moved and I could not be missed. I protest about the matter. I wanted to say something to which the


Parliamentary Secretary might have wished to reply. I think it is deliberate and most unfair.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: On the first point, as the hon. Lady knows very well, she will be called. I am sorry that she has had to sit such a long time, but, of course, there have been a great many hon. Members wishing to speak in the debate and, unfortunately, we can have only one at a time.

Mrs. Braddock: Further to my point of order—

Mr. H. Strauss: If I might, on that point of order—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. Lady is addressing me on a point of order.

Mr. Strauss: If it is in order for me to speak, I might be able to simplify the matter for the hon. Lady and myself. If the hon. Lady would like to speak now, and it is understood that I should then speak, I should not like to stand in her way.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I do not like to be a party to a bargain. I was not going to call the hon. Lady next but another hon. Member. So we may have another speech, but I am afraid that it will not be the hon. Lady yet.

Mrs. Braddock: Could you tell me, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, how long I am likely to have to sit here? There are limits to one's patience and one's endurance. I have plenty of both, but there are limits to them. I do think this is most unfair.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: If the Parliamentary Secretary does not rise now, I will call Sir Leslie Plummer and then, on that side of the House, I will call the hon. Lady next.

Mr. Nally: Is it quite clearly understood—there must be absolutely no misunderstanding about it—that no matter who you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, in your discretion, may choose to call, those whom you do not happen to have seen yet not only maintain their full rights to speak but are equally entitled—the Parliamentary Secretary has been very good this morning—to have a reply to whatever they have to say from someone on the Government Front Bench?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Most certainly; and, as the hon. Member knows, as long as I am in the Chair there can be no Closure and everybody who rises will be called. Sir Leslie Plummer.

9.33 a.m.

Sir Leslie Plummer: I represent a London constituency which makes no textiles of any sort. It is true that my constituents are worried about the textiles position, but they are concerned more with the prospect of their inability to buy textiles than with the problem of the textile areas and the maintenance of full employment there.
My constituents are, in the main, people in the low income groups who are so hard hit by the Budget that their purchasing power will be reduced to a condition which will, I regret to say, mean an even further blow to the Lancashire and Yorkshire textile areas. This is because the inability of many of my constituents to buy the textiles which they require will increase the unemployment which we have been discussing since 3.30 p.m. yesterday.
However, I live in a constituency which does produce textile goods of a very fine order. Those of us who live in the South of England have been aware of the very considerable change which has taken place in the last decade or so in the distribution of industry there. Among the fields and rolling uplands of Essex, new factories have been built and the smoke of the chimneys is to be seen across a great many of the pastures of the Essex landscape.
The effect of this re-distribution has been to create an entirely new employment situation for our people in Essex. The constituency in which I live is Saffron Walden, and it is a regrettable thing that for the last 13 hours it has been literally disfranchised. It is, of course, a development of our democratic institutions that when hon. Gentlemen and right hon. Gentlemen have high honours conferred on them their usefulness to their constituents falls.
For example, I put it to the House that the usefulness of a right hon. Gentleman on the Front Bench to his constituents is not half as great as my usefulness to my constituents as a back bencher. I am not afraid to get up—if called—to represent the grievances and ills of my constituents.


So I can speak freely. I am not bound by any pledges of loyalty to the people who sit on either side of me.

Mr. Nally: What about Standing Orders?

Sir L. Plummer: But the situation in Saffron Walden is very serious. I would not have been making this comment about Saffron Walden if the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been here since 3.30 yesterday afternoon. I was surprised that he was not here, because I should have thought it would have been impossible that so important an industry as this, with its dreadful toll of mounting unemployment, should be discussed without him being present. Nor did I think it was possible that the effect on his own constituents should have been disregarded by him, because he knows very well how important the textile industry is to his constituency.
There is a belief that the right hon. Gentleman is a bookish and donnish kind of man. We know he is an extremely astute business man, a representative of big business, for he was for many years a representative of one of the biggest semi-monopolies of the textile industry of this country, Courtaulds, gracing the board room with that astuteness and clarity which we have learned to respect in this House. He should know the effect of the Government's policy on the textile industry only too well. Yet he has not been in the House to protect his constituents from the dreadful consequences of the Government's policy.
Let me give an example of what happens in the little country town of Halstead, in the middle of the Saffron Walden Division. There is the great Courtaulds works, outside which are tramping the men and women who have been on short time from last Monday on a four-day week, and who in the next week or so are to be on a three-day week. There is no alternative work for these people. The towns in the district are small. They cannot go to Braintree.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr. Driberg), has said, unemployment there is disturbing. Two thousand out of 18,000 are either on part-time or wholly out of work. It has been suggested that the girls turned out of the

factory should go into domestic service, just as the Tories promised at the General Election. I do not believe it, because they cannot be forced into domestic service. But there are young girls and men out of work in the Chancellor's own constituency, and there is no ray of hope for them at all.
The effect on this rural and semi-rural area is apparent. Halstead has a population of 6,000. Workers come from Halstead and the rural district, making a total population of 9,000 or 10,000; a very fine little economy, and a very fine shopping centre. But the present short time working at the Courtauld factory means a reduction in the purchasing power of the people of Halstead of £500 a day. That is a tremendous cut in the purchasing power of this district; and the unemployment spiral, if one takes £500 a day from the shops, with the shop assistants being discharged, has its effect throughout the length and breadth of the land.
This business of turning a prosperous semi-rural area into an industrial battlefield is producing in rural Essex a condition never known before. The boys and girls are walking through the streets of Halstead with a puzzled and hurt look on their faces. We told them, of course, at the General Election, that this is what would happen to them, but having been brought up in the state of permanent employment, they did not believe us. They are beginning to believe us now.
I appeal to the Chancellor, for I believe he is a man with the welfare of the district at heart. He is a sort of supra-natural squire, and when he rides through on his horse, as he does, let him set an example which can be followed in the North of England. Let him devise a new Utility scheme which will really work to clear the goods from the factories and the pipe-line. Let him be ingenious, as he always said his party would be when facing difficulties, and he will bring hope to a beautiful and smiling countryside which, at present, has no hope at all.
There is one positive way in which a real contribution could be made to the unemployment in the textile industry. It used to be said that one inch on the tail of an Indian's shirt would mean that Lancashire would work two or three shifts. I would say that if one gave a


pair of shorts to each native of Tanganyika one would go a long way towards solving the unemployment in Lancashire—[Laughter]. I do not know why hon. Members opposite laugh; perhaps they have not seen the sights I have seen—Africans dressed in the tatters of a blanket, too poor to buy shorts or shirts.
I have never seen anything funny in malnutrition or most extreme poverty. I saw nothing to laugh at when the Conservative Party started a deliberate attack—a sustained campaign—against the Overseas Food Corporation, which was an attempt, approved by this House unanimously, at a scheme, risky in its conception, but which the House agreed only a Government could undertake for the provision of food for the people of this country, and to raise the standard of life of people living there. It was unanimously approved without a single dissident vote.
When the party opposite used every device they could in suborning the staff of the Overseas Food Corporation, in the maintenance of an "underground" in the staff of the Corporation, they were attacking the future prosperity of the very people who could now have been making a quite significant contribution to the consumption of Lancashire products.

Mr. Fort: Is it in order to discuss the monkey-nut scheme, and, if so, can hon. Members on this side reply?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I was in some doubt, but I have not stopped the hon. Gentleman.

Sir L. Plummer: I know hon. Members want to get in now so that they may sustain some of the charges they made during the General Election, at a time when they could not be rebutted. But I have waited a long time to say some of the things that have to be said on this occasion, and which, I hope, will be repeated and enlarged upon in the forthcoming debates that must take place on similar schemes of colonial development if our Colonies are not to stagnate and we are not to starve.
The time will come for hon. Members to think seriously and earnestly about the failure of private enterprise to sustain a decent standard of life for the colonial

people. When hon. and right hon. Members opposite get themselves into the "Daily Express"—and it is a pity that a great many of them missed today's early morning editions—but never mind, I do not doubt that they will get a paragraph in the "Sunday Express"—when they talk glibly about integrating Empire development policy, and when we hear speeches such as we have heard during the night about the necessity of getting rid of G.A.T.T. and relying on the deep love of the Commonwealth countries for the mother country, they are not facing the fact that the development of the Colonial Empire which could sustain Lancashire and Yorkshire for years depends on a bold and vigorous and self-sacrificial policy for this country to adopt.
What these countries need is capital goods—cement, coal, steel, technicians—but they will give a return in prosperity for Lancashire and Yorkshire. I ask the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to say to his colleague that it is high time now for the Government to consider on a broader basis the possibility of saving Lancashire and Yorkshire by the use of extraordinary methods, and by using courage, initiative and enterprise in the development of the Colonial Empire.

Mr. H. Strauss: rose—

Mrs. E. M. Braddock: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I was promised that before the Parliamentary Secretary replied to the debate, you would call an hon. Gentleman, and then myself.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I said that I would call the hon. Lady next on that side of the House, but that if an hon. Member got up on the Government side I would call that hon. Member in preference to her.

Mrs. Braddock: I protest, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I said when I rose before that there might be something to which I wanted the Parliamentary Secretary to reply. The hon. and learned Gentleman, said he had no objection to waiting until I had spoken. You said, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that you would call an hon. Member first, and would call upon me next. I say that that is on record, and I claim the privilege which was extended to me by the Parliamentary Secretary.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I said that the hon. Lady would be called next on that side, but I must make clear that if any back bencher rose on the other side I would have to call him before the hon. Lady. Of course, a Minister or Member on either side on the Front Bench would be given preference.

Mrs. Braddock: I protest. I am going to leave the Chamber altogether. I have been deliberately kept out of this debate. I was given the promise by the Parliamentary Secretary, when I rose before, that I should speak before he replied to that debate, and that is in the knowledge of hon. Members on both sides of the House, if they are honest. I protest. I am going out of the House in protest. I am the only hon. Member who has risen on the back benches and I am not permitted to speak, although I was given the promise of being able to speak before the Parliamentary Secretary.

Mrs. White: The hon. Lady has been here for eight hours to our knowledge without a break. She represents a constituency in which is the Liverpool Cotton Exchange and which is in an area represented almost entirely by hon. Members on the other side of the House.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: May I put a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker? It is for you to decide whom you call, and when. But may I remind you that the Parliamentary Secretary courteously said that if you permitted it, he would wait and speak after the hon. Lady had spoken. I think that that is how the misconception has arisen. We on this side were definitely of the impression that you would call the hon. Lady before the Parliamentary Secretary, so that if she raised any point which needed a reply, it could be answered.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: When the matter was raised before, I had led an hon. Member to believe, through a friend, that I would call him next. I told the hon. Lady that I would call her next on that side, and I still intend to do that. I hope that she will remain and perhaps speak after the Parliamentary Secretary.

Mr. Maurice Edelman: Would it be possible for the Parliamentary Secretary to reply after hearing the points the hon. Lady has to raise?

Mr. H. Strauss: I think that my words were that if the Chair agreed I would postpone my speech; but the hon. Lady was not called, and I was not conscious of having in any way failed when no one else got up on my side.

Mrs. Castle: In view of the fact that the hon. and learned Gentleman said he would give way, could not the difficulty be solved by his remaining seated?

Mr. Strauss: rose—

Mrs. Braddock: On a point of order. Do I understand that the Parliamentary Secretary is going to insist on being called in spite of the statement he made on a previous occasion when I raised the matter?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I do not think that that is a point of order for me.

Mrs. Braddock: Do I understand that that is the position?

Mr. Charles Boyle: Further to that point of order. This has been a long and important debate. We are debating on the Consolidated Fund Bill, which, I respectfully suggest, is very wide and allows for a long debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Exchange (Mrs. Braddock) has been in this House a long time, and she represents a constituency which is very important in the cotton trade. I would plead, with others, to the hon. and learned Gentleman that he might give way to my hon. Friend, so that her points might be replied to by him.

Mr. Strauss: rose—

Mr. Edward Shackleton: Further to that point of order. There seems to have been some confusion on the point of calling the hon. Member for Liverpool, Exchange (Mrs. Braddock). May we also have confirmed the implication of your remarks to the hon. Member for Bilston (Mr. Nally) that there would be no Closure on the debate?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: So far as I was concerned, I said that there could be no Closure, because I could not accept it.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Further to that point of order. I have just returned to the Chamber, refreshed in body and mind. I would like to know what stage of the proceedings has been reached.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: It is the Third Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill. It is exempted business and can go on indefinitely.

Mr. Strauss: rose—

Mrs. Braddock: I will say what I want. [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary is trying to speak. I do not know what is going on.

Mrs. Braddock: I am making a definite protest. What is more, in the circumstances, I refuse to sit down. I refuse to sit down, in view of what has happened.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: If the hon. Lady would sit down—

Mrs. Braddock: No, I will not sit down.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: She will be well advised to do so.

Mrs. Braddock: No, no. I am making a protest here, because I believe that this has been deliberately done. I say so quite definitely in the hearing and knowledge of a number of Members in the House. I am just not going to sit down.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: If the hon. Lady—

Mrs. Braddock: I am very sorry, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: If she will not sit down, I must ask her to withdraw from the House.

Mrs. Braddock: You will have to, I am afraid, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Under the circumstances, representing the constituency that I do and considering the debate which has been going on, my constituents and the country as a whole will take strong exception to this.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I must ask the hon. Lady to withdraw from the House. Mr. Strauss.

Mr. Strauss: rose—

Mrs. Braddock: I am not sitting down. I am very sorry.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I ask the hon. Lady to withdraw from the House, and I hope she will accept that.

Mrs. Braddock: No. I will not withdraw, either.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Then it becomes very serious.

Mrs. Braddock: I know it does. I intend it to become very serious.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Then I must draw the attention of the House to the fact that the hon. Lady is disregarding my Ruling—

Mrs. Braddock: Then you will have to, Mr. Deputy-Speaker—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: —and I must send for Mr. Speaker.

Mr. SPEAKER resumed the Chair

Mr. Speaker: I am afraid I have to name Mrs. Braddock for disregarding the authority of the Chair.

Mrs. Braddock: Am I permitted to make a statement?

Mr. Speaker: No.

Mrs. Braddock: Not at all?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Lady is not permitted to make a statement on the position.

Mrs. Braddock: Although you have only received a report from the Deputy-Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: Under the rules of order, no statement is permissible.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Harry Crookshank): I beg to move, "That Mrs. Braddock be suspended from the service of the House."

Mr. Emrys Hughes: On a point of order—

Mr. Speaker: There is no point of order. The only business before the House is the Motion moved by the right hon. Gentleman and that is not debatable.

Question put.

The House divided: Ayes, 125; Noes, 67.

Division No.47.]
AYES
[10.0 p.m.


Anderson, Alexander (Motherwell)
Harvey, Ian (Harrow, E.)
Pilkington, Capt. R. A.


Banks, Col. C.
Hay, John
Price, Joseph T. (Westhoughton)


Barber, A. P. L.
Heath, Edward
Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.


Beach, Maj. Hicks
Hill, Dr. Charles (Luton)
Richards, R.


Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)
Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)
Robinson, Roland (Blackpool, S.)


Benson, G.
Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.
Royle, C.


Boardman, H.
Hudson, W. R. A. (Hull, N.)
Savory, Prof. Sir Douglas


Boyd-Carpenter, J. A.
Hutchinson, Sir Geoffrey (Ilford, N.)
Schofield, Lt.-Col. W. (Rochdale)


Boyle, Sir Edward
Hylton-Foster, H. B. H.
Shackleton, E. A. A.


Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth
Hynd, B. (Attercliffe)
Shurmer, P. L. E.


Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)
Jennings, R.
Steward, W. A. (Woolwich, W.)


Brockway, A. F.
Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Storey, S.


Brooke, Henry (Hampstead)
Jones, Frederick Elwyn (West Ham S.)
Sutcliffe, H.


Buchan-Hepburn, Rt. Hon. P. G. T.
Kaberry, D.
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Burke, W. A.
Kenyon, C.
Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)


Butcher, H. W.
Kerr, H. W. (Cambridge)
Teeling, W.


Cary, Sir Robert
King, Dr. H. M.
Thomas David (Aberdare)


Castle, Mrs. B. A.
Kinley, J.
Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)


Davies, Stephen (Merthyr)
Logan, D. G.
Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R. (Croydon, W.)


Edwards, John (Brighouse)
Longden, Fred (Small Heath)
Thorneycroft, R. Hn. Peter (Monmouth)


Fell, A.
Low, A. R. W.
Tilney, John


Fleetwood-Hesketh, R. F.
Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)
Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.


Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)
Lucas, P. B. (Brentford)
Wade, D. W.


Freeman, John (Watford)
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Willey, Octavius (Cleveland)


Gage, C. H.
McCorquodale, Rt. Hon. M. S.
Williams, Rt. Hon. Charles (Torquay)


Garner-Evans, E. H.
Maitland, Patrick (Lanark)
Williams, Ronald (Wigan)


Gordon-Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.
Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)


Gower, H. R.
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Yates, V. F.


Gridley, Sir Arnold
Morley, R.



Hall, John (Gateshead, W.)
Oakshott, H. D.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Hargreaves, A.
Oldfield, W. H.
Mr. Maude and


Harrison, J. (Nottingham, E.)
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Squadron Leader Cooper.


Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)
Orr-Ewing, Charles Ian (Hendon, N.)





NOES


Aitken, W. T.
Baldwin, A. E.
Bowden, H. W.


Albu, A. H.
Balfour, A.
Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.


Ashton, H. (Chelmsford)
Barlow, Sir John
Brook, Dryden (Halifax)


Assheton, Rt. Hon. R. (Blackburn. W.)
Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)
Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.


Attlee, Rt. Hon. C. R.
Bence, C. R.
Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)


Awbery, S. S.
Bennett, William (Woodside)
Brown, Thomas (Ince)


Ayles, W. H.
Blyton, W. R.
Bullard, D. G.


Bacon, Miss Alice
Bossom, A. C.
Champion, A. J.




Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)
Hutchison, Lt.-Com. Clark (E'b'rgh, W.)
Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)


Coldrick, W.
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Roper, Sir Harold


Cook, T. F.
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Ross, William


Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Short, E. W.


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Keenan, W.
Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Cot. O. E.
Lee, Frederick (Newton)
Slater, J.


Crouch, R. F.
Legh, P. R. (Petersfield)
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Crowder, John E. (Finchley)
Lever, Leslie (Ardwick)
Smithers, Peter (Winchester)


Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.
Lindgren, G. S.
Snow, J. W.


Deedes, W. F.
Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)
Soames, Capt. C.


Deer, G.
Lockwood, Lt.-Col. J. C.
Sparks, J. A.


Delargy, H. J.
Longden, Gilbert (Herts, S.W.)
Stoddart-Scott, Col. M.


Digby, S. Wingfield
McGhee, H. G.
Stross, Dr. Barnett


Dodds-Parker, A. D.
McLeavy, F.
Summers, G. S.


Donner, P. W.
Macmillan, Rt. Hon. Harold (Bromley)
Sylvester, G. O.


Drewe, C.
Macpherson, Maj. Niall (Dumfries)
Taylor, John (West Lothian)


Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.
Mann, Mrs. Jean
Taylor, Rt. Hon. Robert (Morpeth)


Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.
Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.
Thomas, George (Cardiff)


Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Mayhew, C. P.
Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)


Finch, H. J.
Mellor, Sir John
Thomas, Ivor Owen (Wrekin)


Finlay, Graeme
Messer, F.
Thurtle, Ernest


Fisher, Nigel
Mitchison, G. R.
Vane, W. M. F.


Fletcher-Cooke, C.
Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)
Viant, S. P.


Forman, J. C.
Morrison, Rt. Hon. H. (Lewisham, S.)
Vosper, D. F.


Fraser, Sir Ian (Morecambe &amp; Lonsdale)
Mort, D. L.
Wakefield, Sir Wavell (Marylebone)


Gibson, C. W.
Mulley, F. W.
Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.


Godber, J. B.
Murray, J. D.
Watkins, T. E.


Gooch, E. G.
Nabarro, G. D. N.
Watkinson, H. A.


Greenwood, Anthony (Rossendale)
Nally, W.
Weitzman, D.


Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.
Neal, Harold (Bolsover)
Wellwood, W.


Grey, C. F.
Nugent, G. R. H.
West, D. G.


Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Oswald, T.
Wheatley, Rt. Hon. John


Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)
Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)


Hall, Rt. Hon. Glenvil (Colne Valley)
Pargiter, G. A.
Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W.


Hamilton, W. W.
Partridge, E.
Wigg, G. E. C.


Hannan, W.
Paton, J.
Wilkins, W. A.


Harvey, Air Cdre. A. V. (Macclesfield)
Pearson, A.
Willey, Frederick (Sunderland, N.)


Hayman, F. H.
Perkins, W. R. D.
Williams, David (Neath)


Heald, Sir Lionel
Plummer, Sir Leslie
Williams, Gerald (Tonbridge)


Hirst, Geoffrey
Popplewell, E.
Williams, Sir Herbert (Croydon, E.)


Holmes, Horace (Hemsworth)
Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)
Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)


Horobin, I. M.
Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)
Williams W. R. (Droylesden)


Houghton, Douglas
Proctor, W. T.
Wills, G.


Howard, Greville (St. Ives)
Profumo, J. D.
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Hudson, James (Ealing, N.)
Pryde, D. J.
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Remnant, Hon. P.



Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvonshire)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Hurd, A. R.
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)
Mr. Irving and Mr. Orbach


Main Question, as amended, put, and agreed to.

Division No. 48.]
AYES
[10.0 a.m.


Aitken, W. T.
Grimond, J.
Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D.


Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.)
Orr-Ewing, Charles Ian (Hendon, N.)


Anstruther-Gray, Maj. W. J.
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Osborne, C.


Arbuthnot, John
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)
Peake, Rt. Hon. O.


Assheton, Rt. Hon. R. (Blackburn, W.)
Harvey, Air Cdre. A. V. (Macclesfield)
Powell, J. Enoch


Astor, Hon. J. J. (Plymouth, Sutton)
Hay, John
Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.


Baldwin, A. E.
Heald, Sir Lionel
Profumo, J. D.


Banks, Col. C.
Heath, Edward
Raikes, H. V.


Barber, A. P. L.
Hicks-Beach, Major W. W.
Redmayne, M.


Baxter, A. B.
Hill, Dr. Charles (Luton)
Remnant, Hon. P.


Beamish, Maj. Tufton
Hinchingbrooke, Viscount
Roberts, Maj. Peter (Healey)


Bennett, Sir Peter (Edgbaston)
Holland-Martin, C. J.
Roper, Sir Harold


Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)
Holt, A. F.
Savory, Prof. Sir Douglas


Black, C. W.
Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.
Scott, R. Donald


Bossom, A. C.
Howard, Greville (St. Ives)
Scott-Miller, Cmdr. R.


Boyd-Carpenter, J. A.
Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)
Smithers, Peter (Winchester)


Boyle, Sir Edward
Jenkins, R. C. D. (Dulwich)
Spearman, A. C. M.


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.
Kaberry, D.
Spans, Sir Patrick (Kensington, S.)


Buchan-Hepburn, Rt. Hon. P. G. T.
Lambton, Viscount
Stevens, G. P.


Bullard, D. G.
Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.
Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)


Bullock, Capt. M.
Legh, P. R. (Petersfield)
Studholme, H. G.


Butler, Rt. Hon. R. A. (Saffron Walden)
Linstead, H. N.
Sutcliffe, H.


Cary, Sir Robert
Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)
Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)


Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)
Low, A. R. W.
Teeling, W.


Cole, Norman
Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)
Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. P. L. (Hereford)


Conant, Maj. R. J. E.
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)


Cooper-Key, E. M.
McCallum, Major D.
Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R. (Croydon, W.)


Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C.
Macdonald, Sir Peter (I. of Wight)
Thorneycroft, R. Hn. Peter (Monmouth)


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
McKibbin, A. J.
Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.


Crouch, R. F.
McKie, J. H. (Galloway)
Touche, G. C.


Darling, Sir William (Edinburgh, S.)
Maclean, Fitzroy
Turton, R. H.


Davies, Rt. Hn. Clement (Montgomery)
MacLeod, Iain (Enfield, W.)
Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.


Dodds-Parker, A. D.
Macpherson, Maj. Niall (Dumfries)
Vesper, D. F.


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord Malcolm
Maitland, Comdr. J. F. W. (Horncastle)
Ward, Hon. George (Worcester)


Drayson, G. B.
Maitland, Patrick (Lanark)
Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)


Eccles, Rt. Hon. D. M.
Marlowe, A. A. H.
Wellwood, W.


Fell, A.
Marples, A. E.
Williams, Sir Herbert (Croydon, E.)


Fletcher-Cooke, C.
Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.
Wills, G.


Fort, R.
Mellor, Sir John
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Fraser, Sir Ian (Morecambe &amp; Lonsdale)
Nabarro, G. D. N.



Gage, C. H.
Nicolson, Nigel (Bournemouth, E.)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Galbraith, T. G. D. (Hillhead)
Noble, Cmdr. A. H. P.
Brigadier Mackeson and Mr. Butcher.


Godber, J. B.
Oakshott, H. D.





NOES


Awbery, S. S.
Edelman, M.
Royle, C.


Bence, C. R.
Edwards, John (Brighouse)
Schofield, S. (Barnsley)


Beswick, F.
Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Bing, G. H. C.
Fienburgh, W.
Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)


Blackburn, F.
Greenwood, Anthony (Rossendale)
Slater, J.


Boardman, H.
Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.
Grey, C. F.
Swingler, S. T.


Bowles, F. G.
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Sylvester, G. O.


Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth
Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)
Thomas, George (Cardiff)


Brook, Dryden (Halifax)
Hall, Rt. Hon. Glenvil (Colne Valley)
Watkins, T. E.


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Hargreaves, A.
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)


Burke, W. A.
Holmes, Horace (Hemsworth)
White, Henry (Derbyshire, N. E.)


Burton, Miss F. E.
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W.


Castle, Mrs. B. A.
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Wigg, G. E. C.


Champion, A. J.
Jones, David (Hartlepool)
Wilkins, W. A.


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Keenan, W.
Williams, Ronald (Wigan)


Crossman, R. H. S.
Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Williams, W. R. (Droylsden)


Cullen, Mrs. A.
MacColl, J. E.
Williams, W. T. (Hammersmith, S.)


Davies, Harold (Leek)
Nally, W.
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Donnelly, D. L.
Plummer, Sir Leslie
Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)


Driberg, T. E. N.
Price, Joseph T. (Westhoughton)
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John (W. Bromwich)
Rhodes, H.



Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.
Ross, William
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:




Mr. Bowden and Mr. Popplewell.

Mr. Speaker: I must now direct the hon. Lady to withdraw from the House.

Mrs. Braddock: I do that with a protest.

The hon. Member withdrew accordingly.

Original Question again proposed.

Mr. S. Silverman: On a point of order. I would, with respect to you, Sir, and with your leave, like to move a Motion to adjourn the debate in order to call attention to the serious limitation upon the debate which has just occurred, and the unsatisfactory position which would result if the debate were now to be continued.
Many of us on this side, and many, indeed, on the other side have sat in the House to debate the serious situation in Lancashire and elsewhere in the textile trade—with an interruption of three hours from seven o'clock until 10 o'clock last night—from 3.30; that is to say, for many hours. I see many faces here that I missed during the night—[HON. MEMBERS: "And on that side."]; it is perfectly true, as has been pointed out most vociferously from the other side of the House, that there are some new faces on this side of the House, too.
But there is a difference between the two cases. In the case of my hon. Friends on this side, they voted against the suspension of a Parliamentary—colleague[Interruption]—on this side all of them voted. The hon. Member may challenge it later in the debate but at the moment it is I who am addressing Mr. Speaker, and I say that all my hon. and right hon. Friends on this side voted against the suspension of their Parliamentary colleague, whereas the great majority of hon. and right hon. Members opposite voted for the suspension of a Parliamentary colleague when they had not the faintest notion what the dispute was about.
With the fair-mindedness of Members of the House of Commons, irrespective of party, where matters affecting the House itself as a House of Commons matter and individual Members are concerned, I am quite sure that they will have a little patience with me while I explain to them what the circumstances were, so that they may consider—

Sir H. Williams: On a point of order. Is it competent, Mr. Speaker, to debate a decision which the House has already taken?

Mr. Speaker: Do I understand that the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) is moving the adjournment of the debate? If so, I will forthwith put that Question.

Mr. Silverman: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. Member wish to raise a point of order?

Mr. Silverman: I was seeking, with your permission, Mr. Speaker, and I thought that you had called me and that I had your leave, to submit to the House that they should agree with me in thinking that the debate should be adjourned.

I was in the middle of doing so and I sat down to enable the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams) to raise a point of order.
I was not in the least seeking to discuss the decision to which the House has just come. I agree that that would be out of order. What I am saying is that in the circumstances which occurred—and I pass no opinion about them one way or the other, reserving one's right to do so on an appropriate occasion—I should like to explain why hon. Members should agree with me that the debate should not now continue for the moment. I thought it was relevant to that argument to explain to so many strange faces, new ones who have not been with us and who know nothing of the circumstances to which I have referred, what those circumstances were.
I was endeavouring to do so without expressing or indicating or hinting at any expression of opinion. But, with respect, I think it would be quite wrong for hon. Members to vote for or against the adjournment of the debate at this moment without in the least knowing what the circumstances are. Therefore, with your permission, Mr. Speaker, I propose to explain it to them.

Sir W. Darling: On a point of order. Is it in order for the hon. Member to suggest that I do not know why I voted or where I voted?

Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of order. The House must be presumed to be in possession of sufficient knowledge of its own proceedings to enable it to decide whether a debate should be adjourned or not. I do not wish to be over-strict with the hon. Member if he briefly explains his reasons, but I hope he will not find it necessary to give a long explanation of the facts, which are fairly well-known to the House.

Mr. Silverman: But for the interruptions of hon. Members whose anxiety not to know the circumstances is really very puzzling, my explanation would have been over long ago. What I want to explain is that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Exchange (Mrs. Braddock) had sat in this House from ten minutes to two until a few minutes ago.

Miss Irene Ward: On a point of order. Is it not usual and


traditional for the House to support the Chair? Is it necessary and in order for the hon. Member to continue?

Mr. Silverman: I am not seeking to discuss the action of the Chair. I know from recent personal experience that Mr. Speaker has been acting perfectly properly. I make no attack or criticism at all about that. What I am saying to hon. Members opposite is that my hon. Friend did sit here from 1.50 a.m. until a few minutes ago without going from the House at all, rising and seeking to catch the eye of Mr. Speaker or Mr. Deputy-Speaker after every speaker throughout that time, and at the very last moment there was some little misunderstanding about it and it seemed to many of us to be as a result of exchanges between the Parliamentary Secretary—whose good temper and courtesy in the matter up to that point we all acknowledge and who was in no way responsible—and the Chair agreed that the hon. Lady should be heard in the debate before the Parliamentary Secretary replied.
That did not happen, and if I have no right to make any comment about it at this stage, then I make no comment. What I say to hon. Members is that when an hon. Member has done what the hon. Lady did, and when she represents a constituency vitally concerned with the matters we have been debating for so many hours, it would be highly appropriate for the House to adjourn this debate until the day comes when the hon. Lady returns, and catches your eye, Sir—as I am sure she will—to make the contribution we were all anxious to hear.

Mr. Ross: On a point of order. I do not know how it is at your end of the Chamber, Mr. Speaker, but on these benches we cannot hear a word that is being said because of the babble that is going on.

Mr. Silverman: There is only one further consideration—

Mr. Drayson: Further to that point of order. [HON. MEMBERS: "Order."] I understood that the hon. Gentleman had finished.

Hon. Members: No.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Silverman.

Mr. Silverman: I have only one further point. The only other consideration which I would commend to hon. Members is that it is in the highest degree unusual in the history of the House, so far as I know, that Motions of the kind which the House has just decided are decided as between the Government on one side and the Opposition on the other. It has happened very, very rarely, and when it does happen the circumstances are generally agreed to be exceptional.
I think that those exceptional circumstances would justify the House in agreeing to suspend the debate now and resuming it on the day when by hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Exchange, is back in her place and when Mr. Speaker calls her, as I have no doubt he would, to continue the debate which we now break off. I beg to move, "That the debate be now adjourned."

Mr. F. Beswick: I beg to second the Motion.

10.19 a.m.

Mr. Ede: I understand that the debate during the night has been conducted with an earnest desire on both sides of the House to bring to the attention of Her Majesty's Government the problems that confront the textile industry, which is certainly the staple industry of two of the largest counties in the country. I also understand that various suggestions have been made to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade. I was not present through the night. This is the first all-night Sitting that I have not attended in full since I became a Member of this House. But I made inquiries about 10.30 last night and was assured that if I arrived here at 9 o'clock this morning, I should find the debate still in progress.
There has been the unfortunate incident which has just occurred. I am bound to say that I view it with very sincere sorrow because I think the hon. Lady received an intimation from the Parliamentary Secretary which entitled her to think that he would not intervene until she had been heard. But that issue has been decided, and I do not wish to allude to it further.
However, it is quite clear that the subject matter of the debate is one that excites great interest in the House and


that it cannot be expected that it will conclude with this discussion on the Bill and that the discussion must be still further prolonged for a considerable time.
No dilatory Motion has been moved during the night to ascertain the intentions of Her Majesy's Government about the matter. Therefore, I should like to ask the Leader of the House if he can tell us what his proposals are about the continuation of the debate on the Bill, and, if he does not think that he ought to ask for it to be continued much longer, what further arrangement Her Majesty's Government can make for the continuation of the debate and for giving us an opportunity of hearing something more hopeful from Her Majesty's Government than we heard from the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade yesterday afternoon.
While we had a very interesting history of the cotton trade and appropriate laudatory references to Hargreaves, Arkwright and Crompton, who have been dead a very long time, we did not get any indication of any positive policy. I hope that the Leader of the House will give us some indication as to when we may get from Her Majesty's Government something constructive in the way of a reply to the very able speech which was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood), who opened the debate yesterday afternoon, and to the suggestions which have been made to him from the benches behind him as to the way in which the crisis in this industry should be met.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to indicate either that the debate can continue for some time yet or that additional time will be found for discussion of the subject.

10.23 a.m.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Harry Crookshank): I am very much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for the courteous way in which he has put his question. As I understand it, the debate has been carried on right through the night in a very, shall we say, amiable manner. There has been, so my reports are, no bitterness about it but a general desire to explore this very difficult problem, and that has been carried out in the context of the Consolidated Fund Bill, this stage of which, as the right

hon. Gentleman knows, it was agreed we should get through during this Sitting. As he knows, it has to be got through during the next four days.
Therefore, I do not think that we could possibly break off this Sitting without having got that stage of the Bill on which we are now engaged, and that makes it impossible for me to accept the Adjournment Motion, because it would mean that the business would have failed and we should be in considerable difficulty, which, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, is usually bound to arise at this time of the year owing to the statutory limits within which financial business is worked. I hope therefore that the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) will now be prepared to withdraw his Motion to adjourn, which I understood from his speech was largely a matter of protest because his hon. Friend had been suspended from the service of the House. That is not for me to enter into. It was a decision of the House, and the Motion automatically followed the result of her not accepting the Ruling of Mr. Speaker.

Mr. S. Silverman: I need not remind the right hon. Gentleman that any protest of that kind at this stage would be wholly disorderly. The rules of the House provide an opportunity for challenging anything which it may be thought should be challenged on another occasion. That may well be considered, but my intention in moving the adjournment of the debate was to afford an opportunity for the House to hear Members who, naturally, wish to be heard, and who, I thought, had the right to be heard on the Third Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill.

Mr. Crookshank: I quite understand that, but I did hear the hon. Gentleman say quite a bit about his hon. Friend, and I was making the point that the House had come to a decision on a Motion which is automatic after action is taken by Mr. Speaker on an occasion like that. As the Consolidated Fund Bill has to be got through, I suggest that he should withdraw his Motion, and that the House should listen to the Parliamentary Secretary—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—who was in possession of the House—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—having been called by the Chair.
Whoever has not been here in the night, my hon. and learned Friend has been the most assiduous sitter on this Bench within living memory, as he has not stirred from his place. For that reason he is even better informed than usual to answer the points of hon. Gentlemen opposite. I suggest, therefore, we should now pass from this Motion to the continuation of the debate, and hear the speech of my hon. and learned Friend. For the rest, of course, the Government will naturally take into account everything said during the debate, but on this occasion I should have thought, looking at the time now and the time that the debate started, that we have done a great deal of exploratory work into this problem. I hope the House will now continue to the main business of the day.

10.28 a.m.

Mr. Hale: I think I may assist the House in this matter. I do not want to add fuel to the fires of controversy, but as I was here throughout the night, and at the time when the original incident materialised I think I may put to you, Mr. Speaker, in no sense of recapitulation, or talking about the vote, but as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) has done, certain matters for your consideration for the adjournment of the debate.
The Leader of the House said that we must get this Bill today, but he will recognise that even over the importance of public business there is the decent conduct of the House and debates conducted with propriety. I do not know what understanding there was between the two Front Benches, but I think I can say that the debate has been singularly pleasant in view of the gravity of the subject.
I hope that hon. Gentleman on both sides will realise that those of us faced with this serious constituency problem had an added anxiety in the debate, and might not have been so much in control of themselves as in ordinary times in the average debate in the House. The Parliamentary Secretary has been a monument of courtesy throughout the proceedings, and held back for a very long time when other people might have attempted to put a summary end to the discussions.
I do not think that it would have been right for him to do so, but I must say

that he behaved with great generosity in this matter. With great respect, may I say, too, that the Chair has been greatly overburdened in that the whole of the work has devolved largely upon two of the occupants of the Chair, and, so far as I know, no one outside the three regular occupants of the Chair has been called in to assist in this very laborious operation.
It has been an exhausting operation for all who have partaken in this debate, and I observe that all who have done so have been listened to with attention. All that noise now is coming from those who have popped in for five minutes on their way to the clubs and who have no knowledge of the circumstances that arose at 8 o'clock. At that time, there was a friendly protest and I was one of several hon. Members who rose to call the attention of the Chair—

Mr. Speaker: I would call attention to the fact that if the hon. Member is discussing now what happened before I resumed the Chair that would be out of order at the moment.

Mr. Hale: I am not doing so, Sir. I am trying to give a picture of the strain under which the House was labouring at the time as a reason why we should not continue that strain on this very important discussion, and why we should now consider the adjournment of the debate.
I ventured to say to Mr. Deputy-Speaker that I represented one of the largest cotton spinning towns suffering most from unemployment, and I have risen on 38 occasions to catch the eye of the Chair. Mr. Deputy-Speaker did say, with the courteous agreement of the Parliamentary Secretary, who sat back, that he would hear more speeches. The moment came when my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Exchange (Mrs. Braddock) rose and called attention to her own position. It is only fair to say that at that time she had been sitting here almost motionless, except for the intervention she made, throughout the greater part of the night, and I think I am right in saying that at this time we were all in a state of strain and emotion.
It would be impossible for me to recapitulate the facts relevant to the actual suspension. I think that both sides of the House would agree that a great deal of tact was not possible. Hon. Members


had been sitting here for 17 hours in succession and were beginning to tire and nerves were beginning to crack, and it was difficult to recede from the position that had been taken up. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Exchange probably has as great a right in view of the importance of the matter in her constituency as anyone to take part in this debate. She represents the Liverpool Cotton Exchange itself, which was a very substantial subject of discussion during the night.
In those circumstances, if we have reached this stage when physical endurance has been brought to the limit, then I suggest that it is in the interests of the decency and dignity of the House that this Motion should be accepted and that, through the usual channels, we find an early and appropriate opportunity for continuing this important discussion.
May I add a final word? I am not discounting the merits of the matter. It would be a tragedy if we should not be able to have the advice and the eloquence of the hon. Lady the Member for Liverpool, Exchange. It would make for good feeling, for good understanding, and for the best interests of the House if the Leader of the House would now say that he is prepared to accept this Motion without a Division.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: I followed what the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Leader of the House said and on this side we take clearly the reasons why this Bill must be through by 31st March. But that is no reason why this debate should be curtailed or, if it has to be, that time should not be found for this discussion to continue. As my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) said, this has been a friendly and important debate and it would be a pity, in our view, to cut it short unduly.
We are afraid that as soon as the hon. and learned Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary has spoken, the Closure may be moved. I want to remind the Leader of the House that it has been understood that my hon. Friend the Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards) should speak. We also understood that there were others who might, if they were fortunate enough to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, be able to speak also. Therefore, I ask the Leader of the House for an assurance that, once

the Parliamentary Secretary has spoken, this debate will not be brought suddenly to a close by the moving of the Closure from the Government Front Bench.

Mr. Speaker: I must point out that the acceptance or not of the Closure is a matter for the Chair. It can only be moved by hon. Members. I certainly understood that the hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards) would speak to end the debate for his side. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I may be wrong about that. However, on the Question which is now before the House, the best service I can render to the House is to put the Question. [HON. MEMBERS: "No"] Order, order.

Question put, "That the debate be now adjourned."

The House proceeded to a Division.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: (seated and covered): On a point of order, Sir. I wish respectfully to put to you the point of view of hon. Members who have been absent throughout the night, exercising a certain amount of self-denial in order not to compete with hon. Members from Lancashire and other textile constituencies, who wish to continue the debate. I come, Sir, with a fresh and open mind on this question, without knowing the current of discussion and without knowing the bitternesses of the last half-hour, to ask if it is fair to have this Division at a time when certain hon. Members who are anxious to contribute their share to the deliberations of this House have not had the opportunity to hear what the discussion is about.
I speak, Sir, not only for myself but for the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Sir W. Darling). We have exercised self-denial in keeping away from the precincts of this House in order to allow other hon. Members to contribute to the discussion and now, before casting our votes, I submit that we are entitled to hear a reasoned case as to the course now before us.

Mr. Speaker: The issue has been sufficiently deployed before us and the Division is on. Of course, if the House decides to adjourn the debate, that will be the will of the House, but, if not, the hon. Member may have a chance to contribute later on.

Ayes, 95 Noes, 134.

Division No. 49.]
AYES
[10.35 a.m.


Attlee, Rt. Hon. C. R.
Greenwood, Anthony (Rossendale)
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)


Awbery, S. S.
Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.
Ross, William


Bacon, Miss Alice
Grey, C. F.
Schofield, S. (Barnsley)


Bence, C. R.
Griffiths, Rt. Han. James (Llanelly)
Shackleton, E. A. A.


Beswick, F.
Griffiths, William (Exchange)
Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.


Bing, G. H. C.
Grimond, J.
Shurmer, P. L. E.


Blackburn, F.
Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Blenkinsop, A.
Hall, Rt. Hon. Glenvil (Colne Valley)
Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)


Boardman, H.
Hall, John (Gateshead, W.)
Slater, J.


Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.
Hannan, W.
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Bowden, H. W.
Hargreaves, A.
Snow, J. W.


Bowles, F. G.
Holmes, Horace (Hemsworth)
Stross, Dr. Barnett


Brooke, Dryden (Halifax)
Holt, A. F.
Swingler, S. T.


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Houghton, Douglas
Sylvester, G. O.


Burke, W. A.
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Taylor, John (West Lothian)


Burton, Miss F. E.
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Taylor, Rt. Hon. Robert (Morpeth)


Castle, Mrs. B. A.
Jeger, George (Goole)
Thomas, George (Cardiff)


Champion, A. J.
Jones, David (Hartlepool)
Watkins, T. E.


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)


Crossman, R. H. S.
Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
White, Henry (Derbyshire, N.E.)


Davies, Harold (Leek)
Longden, Fred (Small Heath)
Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W.


Donnelly, D. L.
MacColl, J. E.
Wigg, G. E. C.


Driberg, T. E. N.
MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)
Willey, Frederick (Sunderland, N.)


Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John (W. Bromwich)
Neal, Harold (Bolsover)
Williams, Ronald (Wigan)


Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.
Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)
Williams, W. R. (Droylsden)


Edelman, M.
Parker, J.
Williams, W. T. (Hammersmith, S.)


Edwards, John (Brighouse)
Plummer, Sir Leslie
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Popplewell, E.
Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)


Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)
Price, Joseph T. (Westhoughton)
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Pryde, D. J.
Wyatt, W. L.


Field, Capt. W. J.
Rhodes, H.



Freeman, Peter (Newport)
Richards, R.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:



Robens, Rt. Hon. A.
Mr. Wilkins and Mr. Royle.




NOES


Aitken, W. T.
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.)
Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D.


Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Orr-Ewing, Charles Ian (Hendon, N.)


Anstruther-Gray, Maj. W. J.
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)
Osborne, C.


Arbuthnot, John
Harvey, Air Cdre. A. V. (Macclesfield)
Powell, J. Enoch


Assheton, Rt. Hon. R. (Blackburn, W.)
Hay, John
Prior-Palmer, Brig O. L.


Astor, Hon. J. J. (Plymouth, Sutton)
Heald, Sir Lionel
Profumo, J. D.


Baldwin, A. E.
Heath, Edward
Raikes, H. V.


Banks, Col. C.
Hicks-Beach, Major W. W.
Redmayne, M.


Barber, A. P. L.
Hill, Dr. Charles (Luton)
Remnant, Hon. P.


Barlow, Sir John
Hinchingbrooke, Viscount
Roberts, Maj. Peter (Heeley)


Baxter, A. B.
Holland-Martin, C. J.
Roper, Sir Harold


Beamish, Maj. Tufton
Hopkinson, Henry
Savory, Prof. Sir Douglas


Bennett, Sir Peter (Edgbaston)
Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.
Schofield, Lt.-Col. W. (Rochdale)


Birch, Nigel
Howard, Greville (St. Ives)
Scott, R. Donald


Black, C. W.
Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)
Scott-Miller, Cmd R.


Bossom, A. C.
Hutchison, Lt.-Com. Clark (E'b'rgh W.)
Shepherd, William


Boyd-Carpenter, J. A.
Hylton-Foster, H. B. H.
Smithers, Peter (Winchester)


Boyle, Sir Edward
Jenkins, R. C. D. (Dulwich)
Spearman, A. C. M.


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.
Kaberry, D.
Spens, Sir Patrick (Kensington, S.)


Buchan Hepburn, Rt. Hon. P. G. T.
Lambton, Viscount
Stanley, Capt. Hon. Richard


Bullard, D. G.
Leather, E. H. C.
Stevens, G. P.


Bullock, Capt. M.
Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.
Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)


Butler, Rt. Hon. R. A. (Suffron Walden)
Legh, P. R. (Petersfield)
Studholme, H. G.


Cary, Sir Robert
Linstead, H. N.
Sutcliffe, H.


Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)
Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)
Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)


Cole, Norman
Low, A. R. W.
Teeling, W.


Colegate, W. A.
Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)
Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. P. L. (Hereford)


Conant, Maj. R. J. E.
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)


Cooper-Key, E. M.
McCallum, Major D.
Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)


Cranborne, Viscount
Macdonald, Sir Peter (I. of Wight)
Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R. (Croydon, W.)


Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C.
McKibbin, A. J.
Thorneycroft, R. Hn. Peter (Monmouth)


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
McKie, J. H. (Galloway)
Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.


Crouch, R. F.
Maclean, Fitzroy
Touche, G. C.


Darling, Sir William (Edinburgh, S.)
MacLeod, Iain (Enfield, W.)
Turton, R. H.


Dodds-Parker, A. D.
Macpherson, Maj. Niell (Dumfries)
Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord Malcolm
Maitland, Comdr. J. F. W. (Horncastle)
Vosper, D. F.


Drayson, G. B.
Maitland, Patrick (Lanark)
Ward, Hon. George (Worcester)


Eccles, Rt. Hon. D. M.
Marlowe, A. A. H.
Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)


Fell, A.
Marples, A. E.
Wellwood, W.


Finlay, Graeme
Maydon, Lt.-Cmd. S. L. C.
Williams, Sir Herbert (Croydon, E.)


Fletcher-Cooke, C.
Mellor, Sir John
Wills, G.


Fort, R.
Nabarro, G. D. N.
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Fraser, Sir Ian (Morecambe &amp; Lonsdale)
Nicholls, Harmer



Gage, C. H.
Nicolson, Nigel (Bournemouth, E.)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Galbraith, T. C. D. (Hillhead)
Noble, Cmdr, A. H. P.
Brigadier Mackeson and Mr. Drewe


Gomme-Duncan, Col. A.
Oakshott, H. D.

Original Question again proposed.

Mr. Adams: As one who was not here during the debate throughout the night, and who has recently returned to the Chamber because of the increasing significance and importance of this debate, may I respectfully put this point of order? Why was it that in a debate, which is without a time limit and when there were several of my hon. Friends on their feet seeking to make their contributions to the Motion for the adjournment of the debate—I myself was anxious to get up after some of my hon. Friends, who had been here rather longer had spoken—that you, Sir, decided to put the Question? Why, should this debate be adjourned when other hon. Members like myself were anxious to put their point of view?

Mr. Speaker: In the case of a dilatory Motion, the Speaker or occupant of the Chair is given power under the Standing Orders to refuse to accept a Motion or to put it forthwith to the House. The only error I made, if error it was, was allowing the intervention of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) in an attempt to see if we could get an agreed basis on this matter. I ought to have put the Question immediately the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) sat down. That is the only error in procedure that I can detect.

Mr. Adams: When a Motion to adjourn the House is submitted to you, it is, as you most properly said, Mr. Speaker, open to you to refuse to accept it or to put that Motion forthwith. I suggest that there is also a third course which you could have taken on this occasion, and that is permit a discussion in the House as to whether or not the Motion should be put. I would respectfully submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that having entered on the third course and permitted a number of Members to speak to that Motion, that those further Members who were anxious to put their point of view should have been permitted to do so.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member has made his point and he can carry it further if he wishes to. As soon as the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne had sufficiently delivered himself, as I

thought, I tried to put the Question, and it was because I saw that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields was anxious to catch my eye that I refrained from putting the Question forthwith. If that is an error, I hope the House will think it is an error on the side of wishing to give both sides of the House a chance of being equally heard. But I must leave it at that and ask hon. Members if they wish to carry it further to do it in the proper way.

Mr. Ellis Smith: On a point of order. Am I correct in understanding that before Parliament votes supplies and services, the people's grievances should be ventilated and, if possible, remedied? If my understanding is correct, then before the Closure is accepted I want to ask you, Sir, if you will bear in mind that there are grievances among millions of people in Lancashire, North Staffordshire and Yorkshire, and I submit that before the Closure is accepted those grievances should be ventilated and remedied in this House.

Mr. Speaker: The constitutional principle that the hon. Member has enunciated is perfectly correct and well established, but the procedure of the House for giving effect to this principle is our procedure on Supply, and so on. The other matter of the Closure is one which must be exercised on the responsibility of the Chair, if it is moved. That I shall endeavour to do in the interests of the House.

Mr. Smith: And of the people.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Strauss.

10.52 a.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. Henry Strauss): This debate was initiated a very long time ago in an excellent and thoughtful speech by the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood). When he intervened when I first rose to speak I think there was a little misunderstanding. I did not know that it was not agreeable to the hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards), with whom I had had a word, but if there was any misunderstanding I apologise. My motive in getting up to speak at that time was that I thought I should be a little more in possession of my faculties than, I am afraid, I am now after 16 hours continuously in this debate.
I cannot deal with all the speeches, nor will the House wish me to, but I shall say something about some of them. I think it may be convenient if I deal first with a topic that was common to so many of them. One question kept recurring. It was raised by the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle), the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Rhodes) and many others. The question was: What is the view of Her Majesty's Government of the recession? Do they think it temporary or permanent, and what should be the permanent size of the industry?
That question, with variations, has been raised by many hon. Members. Let me say at once that I welcome and share the expressed view of many Members on both sides of the House who expressed confidence in the future of these industries and refused to admit any spirit of defeat. These are vigorous and sturdy industries, and no thoughtful person sees any reason to despair of recovery. But no thoughtful person would minimise the present difficulties and, indeed, anxieties. These have been expressed by many hon. Members who represent constituencies where these industries are carried on, and they all speak with knowledge of the anxieties of their constituents.
Let me give my own view, for what it is worth, stating it in these two propositions. I think that there will certainly be some recovery from what is a worldwide recession; that buyers will not refrain from buying indefinitely. But equally definitely, as far as we can see, there is not likely to be a return to the easy conditions of a sellers' market that marked the post-war boom.
I know there are hon. Members who think that Her Majesty's Government should go on from that to say what should be the right size of this textile industry. I do not take that view. It is impossible now to answer that question with any confidence. In my opinion, anybody who made a confident prediction would be either very conceited or very foolish, and he would do little more than guess. But the fact that the Government take that modest view, of not pretending that they can foresee the future sufficiently now to say what is the proper permanent size of this industry, does not mean that we cannot agree now on certain truths.

As my right hon. Friend said at the beginning of the debate, the industry must certainly make itself as efficient as possible in order to make the greatest use of any improvement and revival. The importance of this was made particularly clear in a passage in the speech of the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne.
The other topic that was common to very many of the speeches was the question of what I may briefly describe as alternative industries, or diversification. Let me, in answer to many questions that have been raised, make certain things clear. Some hon. Members have asked: Is it part of the Government policy to create unemployment in order to provide labour for defence? The answer to that question is, definitely, "No." That answer was given clearly, in answer to Parliamentary Questions, by my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Labour on 28th February. The Government are taking no steps to encourage the movement of workers away from these industries. That does not mean, of course, that if a man is unemployed or on short time, in such circumstances—

Mr. Ellis Smith: A man or a woman?

Mr. Strauss: Certainly. I am much obliged. That does not mean, of course, that if a man or a woman is on short time and desires a different job, the services of the Ministry of Labour and National Service will not be available.

Mr. Tom Brown: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware—this is an important point, which affects both the unemployed and the under-employed—that, if cotton workers who have been signing on at the employment exchanges for a period are offered work elsewhere refuses to accept that work without any qualification, their unemployment pay will be stopped and they are forced to accept the work in order to maintain their standard of life?

Mr. Strauss: I think that those matters have been dealt with in debate by the Minister of Labour, and I would rather not start on an argument of that nature now. I do not think—I speak from memory—that anybody can be deprived of benefit in such circumstances without right of appeal.

On the question of diversification—

Mr. Ness Edwards: Before the hon. and learned Gentleman leaves that point, I would point out that it was this country which invited foreigners to come over here, and we should give some guarantee to the people from camps in Germany and Austria. What is to happen to these people to whom we have given specific undertakings, and what care shall we take of them?

Mr. Strauss: The right hon. Gentleman is himself a former Minister in the Department and I have no doubt that the undertakings will be observed.

Mr. Driberg: Would the hon. and learned Gentleman allow me?

Mr. Strauss: I think I had better get on. It will be for the convenience of the House. I am conscious of being rather inadequate in all the circumstances, but I shall do my best to deal with the questions many hon. Members have asked.

Mr. Driberg: It was relevant to that particular point. I did raise the question of the Poles who are now being sacked from various textile factories. Can the hon. and learned Gentleman say definitely what is being done about them, where they are being sent, and how they are to be treated?

Mr. Strauss: I would much rather not risk making a statement without full inquiry, which I have not had a chance of making since the hon. Gentleman put the point in his speech, but I shall certainly make inquiries.
I was proceeding to the question to which my right hon. Friend alluded in his speech, when he said in effect that ideally no area should be wholly dependent on a single industry. Of course, we all feel that, but let us have regard to what is practicable. In the past, it was not considered desirable generally in the textile areas—nor indeed would it have been good policy, because until recently there was no available labour for new industries other than textiles in the areas concerned. There is the point of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman), to which I will come later when I reply to his speech. Nevertheless, there are areas which are excessively dependent on a single industry. In such cases, we shall

encourage firms looking for new capacity to consider those areas, as well as other areas needing new industry. I know there are many hon. Members on both sides of the House who have in mind the Development Areas, for example, which they do not wish to be forgotten.
In fairness to the House, because I do not wish to minimise the difficulties or exaggerate what can be done, I must remind them that there are great difficulties about new building through limitation of capital investment and shortage of steel. For those reasons, very severe tests have to be satisfied—strict tests—whether the proposed building or extension of a building contributes to defence, exports or other essential production.
I think that perhaps those were the biggest general questions which occurred in many speeches, and for that reason I have considered them separately. I now come to some of the speeches. I think I have dealt with the point raised by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Burke). I was delighted that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Rochdale (Lieut.-Colonel Schofield) ended his speech, as did so many hon. Members, with so tough a declaration of the confidence of this great industry. The hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East, was highly critical. I cannot deal with the whole of her speech, but I should like to deal with some of the points she made.
She seemed to think it would be useful if we indulged in rather close bilateral bargaining with other members of the British Commonwealth and Empire. I cannot share that view. I think it would not be at all a hopeful method of proceeding. She even suggested there might have been an agreement with Australia by which we refused to let them have any capital equipment unless they took so much textiles. Let the House consider what that means. We should be saying to Australia: "We refuse you the thing you believe to be the most necessary to your recovery and we insist upon your having the thing which you say at the moment you do not need." Not only would it not be the way to foster friendly relations with another member of the Commonwealth, but it would not help Australia to remedy her position and hasten the day when she could again


offer a healthy market for our exports. The hon. Lady, having made that, as I thought, impracticable suggestion—

Mr. Ross: The hon. and learned Gentleman will remember that during the course of the evening about five or six speeches were made from his own side of the House asking for the same conditions to be attached to trade negotiations. The Argentine, Greece, and practically every South American country was mentioned. Does he take up exactly the same attitude?

Mr. Strauss: I have not mentioned those speeches. I will mention other speeches.

Mr. Ross: It is the same point.

Mr. Strauss: The hon. Member may think the point is the same, but at the moment I am expressing a view upon a point raised by the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East. I am not expressing any agreement—nor do I in fact feel in complete agreement—with many of the speeches made on both sides of the House. I am giving, quite fairly I hope, my own view and that of Her Majesty's Government.

Mr. Ross: Are they the same?

Mr. Jack Jones: Not necessarily.

Mr. Strauss: Having made that very unhappy suggestion about Australia, the hon. Lady made the still more impracticable suggestion that we should do away with United States tariffs. That seemed to me to be a little more difficult.

Mrs. Castle: When the hon. and learned Gentleman says it was not a very happy suggestion, does he mean to tell the House that he does not agree that a reduction of the United States very high tariff on our textiles would be a good thing and should not be pursued?

Mr. Strauss: Of course I did not say anything of the sort. What was stated again and again was the suggestion that Her Majesty's Government had no practical remedies and that some of the speakers in the debate had. This was one of the practical remedies.

Mrs. Castle: Is it not?

Mr. Strauss: I do not think any foreign Government has the slightest doubt that

we want a reduction of tariffs against our goods, and if the hon. Lady will use her very good brains she will come to the same conclusion.

Mr. Desmond Donnelly: rose—

Mr. Strauss: No, I feel less obligation to yield to those who have not taken part in the debate and who for most of the time were not here.

Mr. Donnelly: May I point out that, apart from a couple of hours I have been here all night. It is most unfair to make that suggestion. If the hon. and learned Gentleman really wants to throw stones he should look round at the glass houses behind him.

Mr. Strauss: One cannot be here for 15 hours without knowing the faces in the Chamber. I did occasionally see the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Donnelly), but he was not one of those who were here through the night.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bedford (Captain Soames) made a proposal which, I think, interested the whole House. He inquired whether it would be possible to use some of the moneys made available for Arab refugees in the purchase of textiles. I can promise the hon. and gallant Member and the House that that proposal will be carefully examined. The hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne made a very important and true statement when he spoke of the extreme importance for a nation which had an important textile trade, at the time when a recession or slump was at its worst, to be ready efficiently to make use of any revival. That view is shared by Her Majesty's Government.
The hon. Member for Bradford, East (Mr. McLeavy), and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Mr. Hirst) suggested that we were not tough enough in some of our negotiations with foreign Powers. I think there is a tendency to underestimate the difficulties of such negotiations when the commodities that the other countries require most are such commodities as coal and steel, which we are not in a position to supply in the quantities they desire, and when the first object of such negotiations so often has to be the obtaining of food and raw materials.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) rather gallantly


introduced the subject of pottery and asked me one or two questions. He asked whether the pottery industry had made a valuable contribution to our exports. Yes, it has. He asked whether it still mattered. Very definitely, yes. There was one point in the hon. Gentleman's speech which I heard with a little astonishment, and that was that, while, on the whole, he praised the planning of our affairs in the period before the present Administration took office, he said the trouble about it was that we sold abroad too cheaply and bought too expensively. I thought that came a little strangely from a supporter of the Government which devalued our currency.

Mr. Ellis Smith: I am very pleased to hear the Parliamentary Secretary state that the export trade is as important as ever. Does that mean to say that it will be the Government's policy that the labour force engaged in this consumer goods industry should in no circumstances be dispersed?

Mr. Strauss: I think that some release of labour has been necessary recently; but I think the agreement of the pottery industry has been sought and obtained for the dispersal of some labour from the industry, which the hon. Member knows so well, for an urgent scheme. Subject to that limitation, he can take it that we are anxious not to disperse the labour in that industry.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Does that mean that girls who come from very poor homes and have qualified as very skilled people are now, after all that they have done, to be influenced in other directions?

Mr. Strauss: No, Sir. I do not think it means that at all.

Mr. S. Silverman: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman's reference to devaluation mean that it is now the official view of Her Majesty's Government that the devaluation of that time was wrong? They have never said so before.

Mr. Strauss: There was never the slightest sense in discussing whether it was right or wrong at the time it happened. It was not a stroke of policy at all; it was compelled; but the policy that led up to the disaster was the policy of His Majesty's Administration at that time.
The hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White), asked what we meant by "a high and stable level of employment." The answer is that we mean exactly the same as the Opposition meant by their use of the identical phrase in a document of the Labour Government.

Mrs. White: The hon. and learned Gentleman has misrepresented what I said.

Mr. Strauss: That can be seen in HANSARD.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Strauss: I cannot give way. I shall not be much longer.

Mr. Driberg: Eight per cent. of unemployment. I asked the hon. and learned Gentleman—

Mr. Strauss: Several hon. Members asked me about that. I shall not identify them. Those who were here all night know what I say is true. Several hon. Members asked what we meant by "a high and stable level of employment," and my answer is—hon. Members may think it a good one or a bad one, but it is my answer—that we mean exactly the same as the Labour Government meant when it used the identical phrase in its document "Distribution of Industry," in the foreword and elsewhere in that document.

Mr. J. Edwards: rose—

Mr. H. Strauss: I cannot give way—

Mr. Adams: On a point of order. Would it be appropriate at this stage to ask for your assurance, Mr. Speaker, that when the Closure is moved from the Government Benches, as it undoubtedly will be, you will bear in mind the refusal of the Parliamentary Secretary, who is speaking officially for the Government, to answer questions properly put from this side of the House; and can we have an assurance that you will give those hon. Members an opportunity to develop their points in speech?

Mr. Speaker: I can assure the hon. Member that, if and when the Closure is moved, I shall bear all relevant considerations in mind.

Mr. J. Edwards: I was about to ask the hon. and learned Gentleman, who is noted for his logic, how he thought he could possibly get away with a definition which merely repeats the words which are to be defined. That is what he has done. He is saying, in short, "I have not the faintest idea what I mean by the words I am using."

Mr. Strauss: It is possible to criticise both the term "full employment" and the term "a high and stable level of employment." I can see possible objections to both of them. The suggestion was that "full employment" was as clear as daylight, and that "a high and stable level of employment" was hopelessly obscure. I would point out that, whatever the merits or demerits of the phrase may be, it was used not only in a joint document of the Coalition Government but also in a subsequent official paper of the hon. Gentleman's own Government.

Mr. Harold Davies: So that hon. Members on this side of the House shall not feel quite so sorry for the hon. Gentleman, who has been good enough to sit here all through the night, and whose throat is so sore, will he take a glass of water so that we may be able to hear what he has to say?

Mr. Strauss: I know the hon. Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies) well enough to know that he did not mean to be offensive. I have, in fact, apologised for my voice. But on the chance that it makes it better—although it may make it worse—I will drink some water. I think the House is aware that I am not generally slow in yielding to people who wish to intervene, but I do ask hon. Members, in all the circumstances, to do it as little as possible.

Mr. Ellis Smith: I can assure the Parliamentary Secretary that at present he has the good will of all my hon. Friends. He has won that as the result of the standard he has set during the whole of the night. Therefore, I plead with him not to spoil that now, and to be a little more generous with my hon. Friends who are trying to clear up points so that they may be understood among the people they represent.

Mr. Strauss: I will do my best.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Air Commodore Harvey) spoke, as he always does,

think that actually it had equal third with great knowledge of the industry in his constituency, and rightly claimed that he was the first in this Parliament to raise the case of one of these industries. I wish to make clear—and the point was alluded to by the hon. Member for Leek—what I said about the factory about which my hon. and gallant Friend inquired. The industrial development certificate has been granted, but that does not necessarily mean the building licence. He asked me whether the building licence had been granted. I will find out and let him know.
The hon. Member for Accrington (Mr. H. Hynd) astonished me by stating that the Conservatives said that, in the event of their election, Purchase Tax would be abolished. Considering the number of people I assured when I was being heckled that nothing of the sort would happen, I was a little astonished by that statement.
The hon. Member for Droylsden (Mr. W. R. Williams) asked whether there was any international body studying the prices of raw materials, and so on. I think the House is familiar with the work of the International Materials Conference, and is also acquainted with some of the difficulties of that body. My hon. Friend the Member for Middleton and Prestwich (Sir J. Barlow) raised the question of the Liverpool Cotton Exchange. That subject obviously will be more suitable for discussion on a later occasion.

Mr. J. Edwards: Can the Parliamentary Secretary give us an up-to-date report about the work of the International Materials Conference? It is a long time since we heard anything about it, and it is really important.

Mr. Strauss: I am afraid not. I am making this speech for my hon. Friend the Secretary for Overseas Trade, who recently gave information about it and who I am glad to see back in the House, because at the time this debate was arranged he was ill.
I come now to the subject raised by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne about the contribution the industry in his constituency has made. I am largely in agreement with what he said. I also agree that Nelson is suffering exceptionally, but I would correct him on two points. He said it was the greatest contributor


to our recovery after the war. I think that actually it had equal third place, and vehicles and machines were ahead. He also overstated his point when he said that, at the time when there was this great urging of people to go into the industry, it would have been open to Nelson to say "No." It seems to me that would not have been quite so simple. They were then fully employed on textiles; in order to release the space they would have to be unemployed at least for a time, and it is not by any means certain that anyone else would have gone there. I think that the hon. Member greatly overstated his case for that reason.
He also said that Korea had had a tremendous result through re-armament. Of course, it has. The alternative would have been not to oppose aggression. If we had taken a different attitude we should not have had these economic consequences, but on the decision reached on re-armament I am glad to say that there is not only unanimity on this side of the House but a large measure of support on the other side.

Mr. S. Silverman: rose—

Mr. Strauss: I am sorry, but I cannot give way. He also talked about China—China being a natural market of Japan. I shall not argue with him at the moment whether there was any action we could take which would make Japanese goods more acceptable to China. For the purpose of my argument, and only for that reason, I assume that he is right. But let us not exaggerate the amount of Japanese textiles which China would be likely to take. In 1938, for instance—I think that some of the figures were given by another hon. Member—China's imports were 25 million yards a quarter, of which 20 million were from Japan. That 20 million yards a quarter from Japan went to China as part of 540 million yards a quarter of total exports. I think it will be seen how comparatively small is the contribution that this makes.
The hon. Member for Preston, North (Mr. J. Amery), mentioned G.A.T.T., and he thought that but for G.A.T.T. we could have had a much more favourable agreement with Pakistan. The textile preference is 18 per cent., and even if G.A.T.T. were swept away there would have been other grounds why the particular

thing he proposed would not have been possible.

Mr. J. Amery: Had we been free from G.A.T.T. we should have been in a position, to offer Pakistan further increases in preference in this country, which might have induced her to maintain the existing rate.

Mr. Strauss: I think that the hon. Gentleman is wrong. I think that another treaty, apart from G.A.T.T., would have stood in the way, and further there was no adequate quid pro quo that we could have given.

Mr. H. Hynd: What other treaty is that?

Mr. Strauss: I believe it is a commercial treaty with the United States. I am sorry that I have not further particulars on my notes.
The hon. Member for Clitheroe (Mr. Fort) asked me whether there was a risk of some of the Japanese grey cloth not being re-exported. All licences to import this are issued on the condition that it should be re-exported. There is no evidence that that has not been happening.
The hon. Member for Eccles (Mr. Proctor) said that the only solution was Democratic Socialism throughout the world. I can understand that an hon. Member may believe that; but, if he does, he believes that there is no solution for a very long time ahead, because it is quite clear that that is not going to happen.
The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) asked me about a factory which he said the Minister of Supply was about to requisition. I can assure him that no decision has yet been reached, and any further representations will be considered both by the Minister of Supply and by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade.
The hon. Member for Maldon (Mr. Driberg) asked about trade with Eastern Europe, and the same point was put by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne. He thought it would be impossible to have any such trade with Eastern Europe on account of the Battle Act. He is wrong. There is nothing to prevent textiles being sent to Eastern Europe, and in a passage quoted in one of the speeches my hon. Friend the Secretary for Overseas


Trade made that quite clear recently in Geneva, though I am sorry to say that he did not get much response to what he said. If our textiles were to be taken, it would mean a considerable change in the policy of the countries behind the Iron Curtain.

Mr. Driberg: Could the hon. and learned Gentleman deal with the economic conference?

Mr. Strauss: No, I cannot give the hon. Gentleman any information on that subject.

Mr. Driberg: Surely the hon. and learned Gentleman must know of the existence of this important forthcoming economic conference in Moscow? I was urging that, whatever view is taken of the motives of the organisers, surely it is at least worth considering seriously, as the Soviet offer was considered seriously by the Foreign Office?

Mr. Strauss: I have got the point, and I assure him that it has been noted. I merely have no reply to give him on that point because I do not wish to make any reply which might mislead him in any way. I think those are the main questions put to me, with one exception—

Mr. Driberg: Purchase Tax.

Mr. Ross: Will the hon and learned Gentleman allow me—

Mr. Strauss: I am sorry—

Mr. Ross: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker—

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member cannot raise a point of order merely because the hon. and learned Member does not give way.

Mr. Ross: On a point of order. It is rather disheartening, after an hon. Member has sat here from 2.30 yesterday afternoon until now, and made a speech at five o'clock this morning mentioning an industry vital to Ayrshire, when the hon. and learned Gentleman says he has answered all the main questions. He has not mentioned Leith or carpets.

Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of order; but I share the opinion of the hon. Member as to the time we have been sitting.

Mr. Shackleton: On a point of order. Mr. Speaker, I want to seek your guidance. It appears that the Minister is in some anxiety that he may possibly be closured before he has finished making his speech. I wonder whether you could assure us that you will not accept a Closure Motion while he is speaking, and perhaps you could give some indication to the House as to what is likely to happen if a Closure Motion should be moved.

Mr. Speaker: I could not do that because I do not know what will happen myself.

Mr. Strauss: I should have answered several more questions but for the frivolous interruptions and the waste of time.

Mr. J. Edwards: Is it in order for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade to refer to interruptions as frivolous?

Mr. Strauss: I thought they were frivolous, because they were raised as points of order and you, Mr. Speaker, said they obviously were not.

Mr. Speaker: On the main point there was nothing wrong with what the hon. Member said, and also I must say, as an old Member of this House, that I have heard much worse things than "frivolous" said.

Mr. Edwards: May I point out to you, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. Gentleman also used the words "waste of time." We ought not, I submit, to have it said that if we raise points of order we are wasting time.

Mr. Speaker: That is a matter for debate and discussion and it is not a matter for me.

Mr. Strauss: The House obviously does not want to hear anything further from me, and I will not say anything further.

Mr. Driberg: Before those interruptions, the Parliamentary Secretary was just going to deal with the question of Purchase Tax. Surely he is not now going to refuse to deal with it out of pique. The subject was raised by a number of hon. Members in all parts of the House. Would the hon. Gentleman say a word or two about Purchase Tax?

Hon. Members: Answer.

Mr. Speaker: I have no power to make a Minister speak if he does not want to. I find it hard enough to stop them speaking. Mr. Edwards.

Mr. W. Nally: It lies within your province, Mr. Speaker, and within your power, without binding yourself in any way, to give hon. Members some guidance upon a matter about which they are not clear. It is now proposed that my hon. Friend the Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards) should speak, as you have called him. It would be a great convenience and help to hon. Members who still want to speak if you would give some indication if it is your intention to regard the debate as ended for all purposes once my hon. Friend has finished, or whether you will regard with some favour those of my hon. Friends and myself who have been here all night and who are anxious to speak in this debate after my hon. Friend has made what will undoubtedly be a very valuable contribution.

Mr. George Thomas: May I put to you, Mr. Speaker, a further point on that matter? The House within the last hour decided that it preferred to continue this debate, and has, indeed, taken a vote on it, deciding that it did not wish the discussion to be adjourned. In view of that fact and also that several of my hon. Friends have been trying to catch your eye or that of the occupant of the Chair all night, I should like to have your guidance.

Miss Jennie Lee: My hon. Friend the Member for Bilston (Mr. Nally) referred to the fact that a number of hon. Members had been here all night and had tried to catch your eye. I should like to mention that there are some of us here who do not represent constituencies concerned essentially with the textile industry who have also points to put. Naturally, we have conceded first place to hon. Members whose constituencies are concerned with textiles, but in some of our constituencies there are small industries which supplement the basic industry in the matter of employment, and which are now faced with local unemployment. We are also deeply concerned with this debate and concerned with what is going to happen.

Mr. Adams: On a point of order—

Mr. Speaker: I think I had better deal with the points of order already put be-

fore they pile up into an unrecognisable mass. I was asked by several hon. Members to express an opinion on whether or not I would accept the Motion for the Closure. I cannot answer a purely hypothetical question at the present stage. The decision on the Closure is not a matter for Mr. Speaker; it is for the House itself. All the Chair can do is to decide whether or not to put the Questions.

Mr. J. Edwards: Before the points of order were raised, I was going to ask the Parliamentary Secretary if he would deal with the subject of Purchase Tax. This is of the utmost importance, and if the House and the country are not to have a word on perhaps the most important point of all, I am sure that it would give a wrong impression about the way in which we have been debating these matters during the night. We are all tired and I can understand the general feeling, but we must all be a little patient. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to give us a reply, and if he cannot, perhaps his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade will.

11.40 a.m.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: If I may, by leave of the House, speak again, I apologise if I keep moving in and out of the Chamber, but I have certain other engagements. On this question of Purchase Tax, the House will recollect that I said a considerable amount—admittedly it may be rather far back in the recollection of the House—in the earlier stages of this debate about this aspect of the matter.
I said that I thought that, while it is certainly in the scope of the debate, we had had a fairly wide discussion during the Budget debate upon the D scheme generally. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] That is what I said; whether it is right or wrong is another matter. In addition, very wide opportunities will be afforded to the House when the Finance Bill is debated, when Purchase Tax will be discussed and when the Chancellor of the Exchequer will undoubtedly be dealing with the subject. In those circumstances, I do not feel that there is anything further that I could add, and that it is not any discourtesy to the House if I ask hon. Members to leave my statement upon that matter as I made it earlier in the debate.

Mr. Ross: Would the President of the Board of Trade please attend to this point? Has he seen the morning newspapers, such as the "Daily Express" and others? The point that is splashed in the headlines is "This tax must go." We have been talking in this debate—and there have been previous references—about sales resistance caused by speeches made by Members. It is imperative that an early announcement should be made about this matter, otherwise we shall get sales resistance and a worsening position of the textile industry.

Mr. Speaker: I must point out that these are not points of order.

Mr. James Callaghan: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. Member wish to raise a point of order?

Mr. Callaghan: Yes, Mr. Speaker. As it seems possible that the Chief Patronage Secretary may chastise us with scorpions in the near future, I should like, if I may, to seek your guidance on this point. You indicated to us just now that it was a matter for decision by the House whether we should continue our debate or not. That, of course, we respectfully accept. But may I point out to you that discretion is not entirely outwith yourself, if I may use a Scottish expression which is, no doubt, familiar to you. Erskine May, at 457 says this:
Closure of debate. The ordinary Closure: While the Speaker is in the chair, or the Chairman of Ways and Means or the Deputy Chairman is in the chair in committee of the whole House, if a Member rising in his place, after a question has been proposed, moves 'That the question be now put,' that question must be put, forthwith without amendment or debate, unless it appears to the Chair that the motion is an abuse of the rules of the House"—
and then here come the important words in this particular context in view of what my hon Friend the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee) has said—
or an infringement of the rights of the minority.
It goes on to say in the next paragraph:
When closure is movable.—The intervention of the Chair regarding closure is restricted to occasions when the motion is made in abuse of the rules of the House, or infringes the rights of the minority.
There are two clear cases, and I only put it to you with due deference to yourself,

Mr. Speaker, that the decision is not entirely a matter for the House but does concern you very much.

Mr. Speaker: I think I made that perfectly clear in what I said before. I have always been well aware of these facts. The decision as to whether or not the Question be put is left to the House—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—wait a moment—on a Division, if necessary. The decision whether the Question is to be put to the House so that it can come to a decision lies with the Chair. The two principles which the hon. Member has mentioned to me have been familiar to me for many years.

Mr. J. Edwards: May I ask the President whether I am right in assuming that the answer he gave is the answer that the Parliamentary Secretary was going to give; that there was no further information that the Parliamentary Secretary would have been able to give us?

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: indicated assent.

11.45 a.m.

Mr. John Edwards: We have had a very interesting debate during the night and I, at any rate, have sat hour by hour with the Parliamentary Secretary, and although my voice may not have gone so badly as his, my head is probably in just as much a whirl as his.
Those of us who thought it desirable to debate the great textile industries in the United Kingdom were quite right in selecting that as a topic, for if there were any who thought that the situation in the textile industry was not serious, I am sure that those who sat through the night will now hold a different view.
I would say to those who represent the textile areas that I am sure all of us are entitled to congratulate ourselves on having had a worthwhile debate, and a debate which is of the utmost significance to certain areas and to hundreds of thousands of our citizens. In the very many speeches that we have had—over 40—we have had points of view put to us on behalf of almost every textile industry, although, of course, the most important emphasis has been laid on the problems of Lancashire.
As hon. Members will recollect, I had the honour of representing Blackburn in


the 1945 Parliament, and I now represent a Yorkshire seat; and since I happened to have done my courting "On Ilkla Moor baht 'at," I think I am entitled on this occasion to lay a little more emphasis on the woollen industry than on the cotton industry.
The wool textile industry was, I think, the first of the textile industries to feel the slump. This is seen clearly enough in the profit figures for the industry. The profit figures for the cotton industry show that 1951 was a very good year indeed. According to Tatterall's Cotton Information Weekly Service, in 1951 80 companies had an average profit of £55,541, which compared with an average profit of £35,166 in the previous year. If we take the actual dividends declared, the average dividend in 1951 was 21.26 per cent. compared with 18.21 per cent.
In other words, the cotton industry, on the basis of this information, had its most successful year of all time, with the possible exception of 1919 and 1920; whereas, although I have not strictly comparable figures, on the basis of such figures as I have it would appear that profits in the wool textile industry fell by about one-half in 1951 by comparison with 1950; and we find from the indices that this decline has continued.
It is difficult to be sure of the numbers unemployed in the wool textile industry, but they cannot be fewer, I think, than 20,000; and, as the President of the Board of Trade himself admitted, these unemployment figures underestimate the problem, because, among other things, very many married women are not insured for unemployment benefit.
There is the further point that the figures themselves do not give the full story because, as would be expected, firms are doing their best to keep their staffs in anticipation of better days. So, if we take the indices of production, we find that they reveal a much greater fall than is indicated by the unemployment figures. For example, if we take the figures of wool consumed in January, 1951, by comparison with January, 1952, reduced for statistical purposes to a standard month of 20¾ working days, we find there has been a drop of 30 per cent. If we take similar figures for tops produced, we see a drop of 34 per cent. If we

take the figures for worsted yarns delivered we see a drop of 29 per cent.
It is easy, especially because Yorkshire representatives are on the whole a trifle more reticent than Lancashire representatives, to conclude that there is nothing seriously wrong in the West Riding at present. I should be the last to exaggerate the position because I happen to be one of those who believe that we do not do our cause any good if we exaggerate it. Indeed, if we have to err, let us err on the optimistic side rather than on the pessimistic side.
Nevertheless, in my division, where there are a number of enterprises of various kinds, including one of the largest carpet mills in the country—I shall say nothing about that, because the matter was properly and adequately covered by the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro)—if we take wool textile concerns, we find that one firm is standing off workers alternate weeks. There are two others who have discharged some workers and are keeping the rest working four days a week. The dyehouses in my constituency are working three days or four days a week and that, obviously, is a serious matter.
Whether we consider wool or cotton, it seems to me that basically our troubles arise from changes in the prices of raw materials. I have not the time, and it would be wrong to detain the House after a long Sitting, to give a detailed analysis of the causes of the present position, but I am absolutely certain that the principal reason for our troubles has been these great fluctuations in prices of raw materials.
What I have been surprised at is that the Government apparently have nothing whatever to tell the House or the country about that. In effect, the Parliamentary Secretary said, "You will have heard of the International Materials Conference and know the sort of thing it does." When I asked if there was anything that could be said, he replied that there was nothing new to say.
So far as I can recollect, neither he, the President, nor the Secretary for Overseas Trade, has made any report to us on these basic materials since they came into office. I doubt whether they have made a single statement about them to the House since they came into office.


The Minister of Materials is hidden away in another place, and we cannot get at him or question him.
When we have a debate of this kind, and when there are disorders in the industry which spring directly from problems concerning amounts of materials, allocations of materials and prices of materials, I should have expected that the first thing the President would have done would have been to give an up-to-date picture and to tell us what Her Majesty's Government have done in this field in continuation of the things the late Administration did.
What have they done? Would the Secretary for Overseas Trade care to tell the House? Can he give us any encouragement? Can we believe that the slightest progress has been made in the allocation of these materials or in regulating prices internationally? I would gladly give way if he can help the House.

The Secretary for Overseas Trade (Mr. Henry Hopkinson): I did not intend to speak at all today. I have just got out of a bed of sickness and I hope I shall be forgiven for not having been present. But on at least two, if not three, occasions, in connection with Supplementary Estimates, I have spoken in this House and in this Parliament and have gone into considerable detail about the operations of the International Materials Conference. I have shown that we are entirely in support of the arrangements that are being developed there and, I believe, are being carried on very successfully by Lord Knollys on the lines laid down by the previous Government, with which we agree and which are leading to fair allocations of raw materials and stabilisation of prices.

Mr. Edelman: Is it not the case that cotton and wool are not under consideration and do not form part of the International Materials Conference, and that the cotton suppliers and wool suppliers have steadfastly refused to take part in that work? Should not the Government take the initiative in inviting producers to take part in the Conference?

Mr. Hopkinson: I feel that I cannot continue on that point much longer, but I note what the hon. Member has said.

Mr. Edwards: I do not want to press the hon. Gentleman because I know

he does not feel exactly like standing up to cross-examination. But however much he has talked on Supplementary Estimates, I still cannot recollect an occasion when there has been discussion, or a report to the House, on textile materials and that, after all, is what I have been talking about. I think he will agree that there has not been such an occasion. I think we are entitled to draw the conclusion that in this important field the cause of our troubles is this question of raw materials, and that is the question about which this Government have done precisely nothing.
I would not wish to repeat what has been said by various speakers, but as one who took part in all the recruitment and training efforts from 1946 onwards as a member of what was publicly known as the Committee of Junior Ministers looking after recruitment and accommodation, the thing that worries me most about our present circumstances is the loss of labour and the difficulties the industry will be in if and when things pick up. The last issue of the "Wool Textile Bulletin," for example, says:
By the end of January, 1942, the combing section of the wool textile industry had lost 21 per cent. of its workers.
It goes on to say:
There is no precise record of where these workers, largely men, have gone, but the history of the post-war years has shown how difficult may be the task of bringing them back to the industry.
I think of the trouble we had and the co-operation we had from the industry and the trade unions, and how painfully, month by month, we gradually built up recruitment, and how we altered the climate of opinion, all of us working together—the people in the areas concerned and those of us in London—until we secured a complete change.
A Northern Ireland Member posed the question—"If you had a child, would you let her go into the textile industry?" When I first went to Blackburn, that was what my constituents were always asking me. By the time we had finished our campaign, we had almost returned to the pre-war scales of recruitment in the cotton industry, and a similar situation existed in the wool industry.
The same "Bulletin" gives the level of youth recruitment. It says that in the main textile districts of the East and West Ridings, 3,504 boys and girls left school


at the end of the Christmas term, 1951, and, of these, 243 boys and 623 girls entered the textile industry—that is to say, something like 14 per cent. of the boys and nearly 35 per cent. of the girls.
What frightens me is that unless we can arrest the decline and change the climate of opinion, all this work will go down the drain and the industry which, after concentration in war-time, had to do an enormous amount to get on to its feet again and to recruit properly, may lose all that it had gained. There is, of course, more than that at stake. There is also the question of all the re-equipment which has gone on, all the amenity provision which has been made, and so on.
I think we are agreed that, while the basic cause of our troubles may be found in the raw material field, at present we could describe our position as one in which the pipe-line is full and in which there is a condition of stasis, where nothing is moving. The big job is to find some way in which the goods can be made to move and in which some of these stocks can be cleared off. That is the task to which the industries are addressing their attention and which I think is important from the Government's point of view.
I was interested that the President of the Board of Trade said, in the course of his opening speech, that it was of
very great importance that a manufacturing industry should be able to obtain its raw materials on terms at least as favourable as those of its principal competitors."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th March, 1952; Vol. 498, c. 428.]
He went on to say that we may sustain some handicap in a sellers' market, but when we get into a buyers' market any handicap in respect of the price of our materials becomes of paramount importance.
I agree, and I am sure that anyone who knows the industry will agree, too; but what surprised me was that the right hon. Gentleman did not draw attention to another handicap which the cotton industry has been carrying and which, as far as I can remember, was referred to in our debate by only my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Rhodes). It is of considerable interest, I think, that between 1st January, 1952, and 11th February, 1952—in that short space of six weeks—the prices of various

types of yarn fell by between 10d. and 2s. a pound, at a time when the price of raw cotton fell by only one penny.
Even when these margins had been cut by these quite considerable amounts, the industry was still operating its minimum prices scheme. In other words, the minimum prices, as laid down by the Yarn Spinners' Association, were exceeded as late as January and February of this year, by which time the recession was certainly on us. These firms had been holding the price.
This is what Tattersall's Weekly Information Service had to say about it:
The first front established by spinners in the early days of the recession was the subject of considerable comment in other branches of the trade. Only now, when circumstances dictate no other course, have the leaders of the spinning branch decided to reduce prices substantially so that in many cases yarns are being sold at the minimum rates laid down by the Yarn Spinners' Association.
I agree with Mr. Hasty in saying, as he did in a speech a day or two ago, that the spinners must have reasonable margins. But when we face a depression, if we have margins that can be cut by as much as 2s. a lb. that is a very much bigger handicap for the industry to carry than the slight differential on the Raw Cotton Commission's prices. Do not let us forget that the burden of this was being carried substantially by the converters, because they were the people with the price control upon them, whereas the spinners and weavers were free from it.
I should not complain, because I negotiated that particular de-control; but I may say that if I had known then what I know later, I should have preferred to retain the control in order that the full brunt was not born by the merchant converters. That is a technical point and it would be wrong for me to go further into it now.
Of first-rate importance to us all is the question of the closing of markets. The right hon. Gentleman outlined to us the great names of the cotton industry—the inventive genius which enabled us, to use his words, "to sweep into the markets of the world." At the moment the trouble is not, for the most part, that we are being priced out of markets; we are being shut out of them. Although tariffs are bad enough, when one gets quantitative restrictions they are very much worse, and anything the Government can do to open up trade, not necessarily in new markets


but by changes in these quantitative restrictions, will be most valuable.
I had hoped that we should have heard something more encouraging about East-West trade. I know the Secretary for Overseas Trade would like to see an extension of East-West trade in this kind of field, and I hope that it will not be too long before he can tell us what has been happening and what hopes there are.
When we talk about the closing of markets, we are particularly concerned about the closing of Commonwealth markets. The President addressed a solemn warning to us. He told us, if I may paraphrase his words, that those who talk about cutting our own imports more should remember the consequences in other parts of the world of cuts that we make in our imports. I should like to tell the Parliamentary Secretary and his colleagues that no one on this side of the House has ever suggested cutting sterling imports. It came as a very great shock to us when we found that we were having quantitative restrictions imposed on us, for example, by Australia.
If I understand the position aright, we are being treated in exactly the same way as is Japan. I do not know if the hon. Gentleman would confirm that, but I think I am right in saying that we are being treated by Australia on all fours with Japan. I took part in the Supply Minister's Conference. I know what co-operation with Commonwealth Ministers means, and I cannot believe that the Commonwealth Finance Ministers' Conference sat round and solemnly came to the conclusion that it would be a good thing if the sterling area were treated by Australia in just the same way as Japan.
I pointed out that there is nothing whatever in G.A.T.T. which stops Australia from discriminating in our favour if they are using quantitative means. Surely the Government must impress on the Australian Government, with all their power, the very great importance of this matter.
After all, it was not the Socialist Party but "The Times" which yesterday said:
The strongest stand must be taken on measures directly involving the breach of contract which is involved very substantially in this field.
It is very difficult to find out what happened at the Finance Ministers' Conference, but nothing that has been said

so far has produced the slightest evidence that anybody sat down and really considered what was to be done. It was thought important enough to have a committee under the chairmanship under the Minister of State for Economic Affairs to chase the mirage of the convertibility of the £. Would not the right hon. Gentleman's time have been better spent if he had sat down with his Commonwealth colleagues and said, "How can we do the least harm to one another?"
What is the point of the sterling area'? It is not just that we want to be the banker. The whole point of the sterling area is that we want to have as large an area as we can get within which trade can flow freely with the minimum of handicap and the minimum of limitation. That is the whole point of the concept of the sterling area. The failure of Her Majesty's Government in the recent conference is bad not only for our trade but also for the future of the sterling area.
I say to Members of Her Majesty's Government—with a proper sense of responsibility, I hope—that it appears as though Her Majesty's Government—nothing has been said to deny this—did not even try to minimise the impact of the measures on Britain or on anybody else. This is really serious. I am not making a party speech on this. Many Conservatives in my constituency whom I know feel just the same about it as I do. Her Majesty's Government ought not to have agreed to things of this kind except on the basis of sitting down together and trying to arrange matters as sensibly as possible, just as we did in the Supply Minister's Conference when we were talking about supplies for one another.
I turn now to the question of the D scheme. I shall not pursue it very far because we have had no extra information. I thought that the President of the Board of Trade left a wrong impression when he implied in his speech that there had been very great anxiety on the part of various textile industries to have the D scheme.
I would agree that the textile industries did not like the rigidities of the Utility scheme, but if a proper assessment could be made at present of commercial opinion we should find that the majority view would be that, while there were advantages in the D scheme, the disadvantages outweighed them. I should like


the President or the Parliamentary Secretary again to consult the various parts of the trade, and if they then came and told us that the trade was keen to have the D scheme in its present form, I should be extremely surprised.
The D scheme is open to all kinds of objections. Here is one from a constituent of mine who makes women's underwear. He says quite simply in his letter:
The D plan makes it quite impossible to put out a simple range of women's underwear in a good wearing cloth without paying Purchase Tax.
He is talking about rayon, and that is just another point to add to those which other hon. Members have brought forward. The least that can be done with the D scheme is radically to revise it and, in particular, to place D at a very much higher level. I emphasise that that is the minimum.
The optimum would be to take Purchase Tax off textile goods at the present time. I am a former Treasury Minister, and I hope I have a proper understanding of what revenue means. It might mean a loss of as much as £60 or £70 million, but even that would be a small price to pay if we could remove the blockage and get goods moving along the pipeline.

Mr. Beswick: May I mention some figures which are relevant? My hon. Friend suggests that £60 or 70 million might be involved. In 1949 the total amount collected in Purchase Tax on textiles and also shoes, plastics and other sundries was £90 million. My information from the Wholesale Textile Association is that over the last six months the collections have been running at the rate of one-sixth of the 1950 figure. Therefore, the amount involved is nothing like that which my hon. Friend is suggesting. That bears out the case which he is making.

Mr. Edwards: I gave a round figure. According to figures given to me by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury for Purchase Tax, excluding haberdashery, the out-turn in 1951–52 was £68 million.
The substantial point which I make is this. I cannot think of any instrument which lies more readily to the hand of the Government at the moment than Purchase Tax. I know the revenue considerations, and I know that Sir Stafford Cripps always held the view that one could

turn Purchase Tax on or off in general, depending on the inflationary or deflationary situation at the time.
He also held the view, as he often told me, that it was important to use Purchase Tax not just as a general instrument but as a particular instrument, and it may be recollected that in the last Budget of the late Administration we increased Purchase Tax on a number of things, against the wishes of hon. Gentlemen opposite. We did so not to get revenue but to stop production in large quantities of things like refrigerators.
It seems to me that, if it is right to do it that way, it is right to do it in reverse, and although I am in no position to judge the revenue aspects of this, I beg Her Majesty's Government to consider whether this instrument can be used, if not in whole at least in part, to help to keep the goods moving in the pipeline and to begin to shift the deadweight load which is pressing down upon the industry in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
I should like to advance two or three other considerations. I was a little bothered by what was said by the hon. and learned Gentleman about the diversification of industry. I thought that his very guarded reference to diversification did not really carry us very much further. It may be remembered that he said that, within the stringent limits within which we necessarily live, application by firms for new capacity will be considered sympathetically in this as in other areas.
I put it to the Parliamentary Secretary that even a carefully worded and very considerably qualified statement like that involves an assumption that there will be some slight recession in cotton otherwise there will not be the labour for the new industries which are established.
I wish to repeat a point which has already been made. I was very glad to hear the hon. and learned Gentleman say that it was not the policy of Her Majesty's Government to create unemployment in the textile industries. That was said without any qualification. Yet this is what "The Times" said yesterday, talking about the textile industries:
The Government's responsibilities in the matter are mixed and to some extent conflicting. On the one side it is their plain duty to prevent serious and avoidable unemployment if they can. On the other hand is their duty to find more labour for defence work and for any industries which can increase their exports.


So "The Times," at any rate, was not clear then, although it may be now.
Let us take this quotation, which is even better:
Ministers are faced also with the need to grapple quickly with the problems of the textile industry. Unemployment in this industry is, of course, the deliberate result of the anti-inflationary policy. Workers must be squeezed out of such less essential industries into defence and export production. Unfortunately, the process in the textile areas has been carried too far, …
Hon. Members will note the words,
workers must be squeezed out of such less essential industries.
That is the textile industries.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Would my hon. Friend forgive me interrupting for a moment? After the great record of those engaged in this industry, which has mainly saved this nation, if that is the policy adopted, then those who are retained in the industry will have the right to consider their position with regard to it.

An Hon. Member: Which quotation is it?

Mr. Edwards: The quotation I have given comes much nearer home. It is a quotation from the London correspondent of the "Yorkshire Post," the Conservative daily of the North. There was a ground for very considerable misunderstanding, and when my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle) was taken so savagely to task for what she had to say, she was using almost precisely those words which I have read from the Conservative "Yorkshire Post."
There remains this: what are the Government going to do with any who are unemployed who do in fact fall by the wayside? We have heard nothing about that. We have not heard either what assumptions have been made. Very soon now we shall have the Economic Survey. I have no doubt that right hon. Gentlemen opposite already know what is in that Survey. I imagine that the President of the Board of Trade does, and the Financial Secretary.
I wonder what assumptions they have made, and what assumptions the Minister of Labour is making for his purposes. It is all very well for hon. Gentlemen to say, "It is too difficult; we cannot look ahead." They cannot begin to do their job without making some assumptions.

If the President of the Board of Trade says that he has not made up his mind already, and that he wants time, then let him set in hand the inquiries and necessary studies without delay. I would say that if we are really to come to grips with this industry we must deal with it in particular and not in general.
There is the question of the Bank rate. The Bank rate has been held by "The Times" as one of the best ways of getting rid of stocks. It is thought that firms will liquidate their stocks more readily because of the increase in the Bank rate. That may be so, but take that together with the restriction on credit, and what is the effect? It is not that we weed out inefficiency, not even that we treat good, bad and indifferent alike. We subject the firm that has served the public interest best to the most severe test.
The best firms are the most vulnerable. We have only to consider the firm that puts back its profit into new machines, the firm which has taken risks and gone out for the export market and which may have fallen down on the job. It is those firms, which may be highly efficient, which will go out under this general Bank rate-credit restriction policy, whereas the firm which has sat back and not bothered and has accumulated its reserves, will, at this moment, be in better form to survive the storm than will be the other firm.
If the President of the Board of Trade wants time before he can really form a view as to the long-term policy of the textile trades, I would suggest there are three things that should be done.
First, all contracts, not just defence programme contracts but all institutional contracts, local government contracts, Government Department contracts, should be hurried forward, and we should try, as speedily as we can, to place as large orders as are justified in the circumstances over as wide a field as possible and plan ahead as far as is reasonable. Second, we should have a drastic revision of the D scheme as a minimum but, in my view, the abolition of Purchase tax on textiles as an optimum. Third, we should make immediate efforts to do something about the quantitative import restrictions, particularly in the Commonwealth, and we should try to get our partners together to see how we can maximise trade and how we can avoid harming one another.
These are considerations that must weigh with all of us, and I believe there is no essential reason why these measures should not be taken. We must not behave as though a given economic climate necessarily applies to a certain industry. I recollect the 30's, before we had the Keynesian analysis, when we had a rather crude trade cycle analysis and, for the rest, were preoccupied with problems of structural unemployment. We shall never deal with genuine structural problems in industry by general monetary means. We did not in the 30's and we shall not do so now.
I have a letter from one of my constituents, a man who does not support my political views, who says, writing about rayon garments:
There is no sense in asking the public to cut down on purchasing garments of this sort. There can be no inflation in keeping the wheels turning round. The very talk in the Press and elsewhere of slowing down trade in normal everyday necessities is suicidal. Let's talk success on those raw materials and goods which we control ourselves.
That is a sentiment with which I entirely agree.
I am sorry that the President of the Board of Trade is not here. He was good enough to tell me that he had to go to an important meeting, and I felt bound to tell him that I could not avoid criticising him nevertheless, and the right hon. Gentleman said he thoroughly understood. However, I say to his colleagues, and I ask them to say it to him, that I think the mood of our long debate has been to say to Her Majesty's Government, "You have been warned; not just by Her Majesty's Opposition, but by almost all of us who have spoken in this long debate. We are worried. We are not satisfied. We think that while the industry must do most, the Government can do more."
Therefore, I say to the President, "You have been warned. We must ask you to report progress very soon and to give to the House some long-term policy for these textile industries at the earliest possible moment." I am sure that we on this side of the House will do anything we can to restore our great textile industries to the eminence they had for so long, or if it should, in the passage of time, come to it that some retreat has to be made, we will play our part in that orderly, disciplined retreat which

will make consolidation possible at a somewhat lower level.
I am sure that in most of what I have said I have spoken not merely for the Opposition but for all of us who have sat through the all-night Sitting. To me this is a very serious matter, and I trust that the Parliamentary Secretary will take these words very much into account.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. P. G. T. Buchan-Hepburn): rose in his place and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."

Hon. Members: On a point of order—

Mr. Speaker: If hon. Members will speak one at a time, I shall hear them. Mr. George Thomas.

Mr. G. Thomas: May I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that according to Erskine May, which was quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), it is laid down quite clearly that it is your privilege and responsibility to protect the rights of minorities in the House, and that some of my hon. Friends have been trying all night to speak on this important subject. May I submit to you, Sir, that you should exercise your authority to protect their rights?

Question put, "That the Question be now put."

Mr. Eric Fletcher: (seated and covered): With great respect, I should like to put a point of order for your consideration, Mr. Speaker, before the House proceeds to a Division. You will be aware that when the Motion for the Closure was put to you, there was a large number of hon. Members on this side of the House who were on their feet anxious to put a point of order to you. My submission is that Members should be entitled to put a point of order for your Ruling and for the guidance of the House before a decision is reached. The point of order I want to put to you is this: today, we are dealing with the Consolidated Fund Bill and I—

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member must excuse me—

Mr. Fletcher: With great respect, Mr. Speaker—

Mr. Speaker: I am bound by the Standing Orders, after two minutes have elapsed, to put—[interruption.] What is the hon. Member's point of order?

Mr. Fletcher: I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to hear my point of order first. If you accede to my suggestion, which I gather commands the support of a good many hon. Members of the House, it may be unnecessary to put the Question a second time. Today, we are discussing the Consolidated Fund Bill and we are being asked to vote an immense sum of money, amounting to over £1,600,000 million. It has been a tradition of the House to discuss all the matters of the administration of the country before the Government are entrusted with this money.
So far, we have only had an opportunity to discuss one limited aspect of the affairs of the Government which is causing intense disquiet. It is no fault of mine or of other hon. Members that so much time has been occupied with one particular subject. Precedent shows that before we give a Third Reading of this Bill, it is vital that certain matters should be brought to the attention of he House.

Mr. Speaker: It is true that we are considering the Third Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill and that a wide range of subjects can be discussed upon it; in fact, everything pertaining to the moneys taken out of the Consolidated Fund.
The fact that the debate has centred upon the question of the textile industry is not my fault any more than it is the fault of the hon. Member. I have to consider whether, after a long debate upon the Third Reading of the Bill, the House can now come to a decision without infringing the rights of the minority, and I say that it can. The Question is, "That the Question be now put." What is really happening now is a debate upon the Closure, and debate on the Closure is out of order.

Mr. Beswick: (seated and covered): On a point of order. May I seek your guidance on this point, Mr. Speaker? I recall that in the last Parliament a similar question to this arose. A point of order was put by an hon. Member after a Division had been called. It was then discovered

that the doors had been locked and the hon. Member did not have the opportunity to exercise his vote. The matter was discussed after the Division, and it was decided that the time taken by the discussion on the point of order should be taken from the period which elapsed between the Closure being put and the doors being locked. May I therefore ask whether it would not be correct for the time taken by the point of order to be deducted from the period allowed between the time the Division was called and the doors being locked?

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I must bring this to a conclusion, and I must take the responsibility for doing it in the interests of the House. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Order. In answer to the first point, it was an attempt to question the propriety of the Closure; that was out of order. So was the second point. In the third point of order I was asked from what time the period runs. It runs from the moment, at which I am now trying to arrive, when I appoint the Tellers.

Question put, "That the Question be now put."

Mr. SPEAKER proceeded to collect the voices.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I must request the House to contain itself. [An HON. MEMBER: "Collect the voices."] I am going to collect the voices now. In fact, I have already done so. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Order. This is not seemly behaviour. The Speaker is bound to put the Question and the House should support him in the exercise of his duty. [Interruption.] This is not seemly behaviour for the House of Commons.

Mr. James Griffiths: (seated and covered): On a point of order. May I submit a point of order to you about which my hon. Friends and I are concerned? When you collected the voices, there were voices for the "Noes" but there were no voices for the "Ayes." I suggest that the Motion has been lost.

Mr. Speaker: I heard "Aye" myself. That is good enough for me.

The House divided Ayes. 168; Noes, 135.

Division No. 50.]
AYES
[12.28 p.m.


Aitken, W. T.
Fletcher-Cooke, C.
Mellor, Sir John


Alport, C. J. M.
Fort, R.
Monckton, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter


Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)
Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)
Moore, Lt.-Col. Sir Thomas


Anstruther-Gray, Maj. W. J.
Fraser, Sir Ian (Morecambe &amp; Lonsdale)
Nabarro, G. D. N.


Arbuthnot, John
Gage, C. H.
Nicolson, Nigel (Bournemouth, E.)


Assheton, Rt. Hon. R. (Blackburn, W.)
Galbraith, T. G. D. (Hillhead)
Noble, Cmdr. A. H. P.


Astor, Hon. J. J. (Plymouth, Sutton)
Godber, J. B.
Nugent, G. R. H.


Baldwin, A. E.
Gomme-Duncan, Col. A.
Oakshott, H. D.


Banks, Col. C.
Gough, C. F. H.
Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D.


Barber, A. P. L.
Grimond, J.
Orr-Ewing, Charles Ian (Hendon, N.)


Barlow, Sir John
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.)
Osborne, C.


Baxter, A. B.
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Peyton, J. W. W.


Beach, Maj. Hicks
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)
Powell, J. Enoch


Beamish, Maj. Tufton
Harvey, Air Cdre. A. V. (Macclesfield)
Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.


Bennett, Sir Peter (Edgbaston)
Hay, John
Profumo, J. D.


Bennett, William (Woodside)
Heald, Sir Lionel
Raikes, H. V.


Birch, Nigel
Heath, Edward
Rayner, Brig. R.


Bishop, F. P.
Hill, Dr. Charles (Luton)
Redmayne, M.


Black, C. W.
Hinchingbrooke, Viscount
Remnant, Hon. P.


Bossom, A. C.
Hirst, Geoffrey
Roberts, Maj. Peter (Heeley)


Boyd-Carpenter, J. A.
Holland-Martin, C. J.
Roper, Sir Harold


Boyle, Sir Edward
Holt, A. F.
Ryder, Capt. R. E. D.


Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)
Hopkinson, Henry
Schofield, Lt.-Col. W. (Rochdale)


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.
Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.
Scott, R. Donald


Brooman-While, R. C.
Horobin, I. M.
Scott-Miller, Cmdr. R.


Buchan-Hepburn, Rt. Hon. P. G. T.
Howard, Greville (St. Ives)
Smithers Peter (Winchester)


Bullard, D. G.
Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)
Soames, Capt. C.


Bullock, Capt. M.
Hutchison, Lt.-Com. Clark (E'b'rgh W.)
Spearman, A. C. M.


Bullus, Wing Cmdr. E. E.
Hyde, Lt.-Col. H. M.
Spence, H. R. (Aberdeenshire, W.)


Butcher, H. W.
Hylton-Foster, H. B. H.
Spens, Sir Patrick (Kensington, S.)


Butler, Rt. Hon. R. A. (Saffron Walden)
Jenkins, R. C. D. (Dulwich)
Stanley, Capt. Hon. Richard


Carson, Hon. E.
Kaberry, D.
Stevens, G. P.


Cary, Sir Robert
Lambton, Viscount
Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)


Churchill, Rt. Hon. W. S.
Law, Rt. Hon. R. K.
Stuart, Rt. Hon. James (Moray)


Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)
Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.
Studholme, H. G.


Cole, Norman
Legh, P. R. (Petersfield)
Sutcliffe, H.


Colegate, W. A.
Linstead, H. N.
Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)


Cooper-Key, E. M.
Lloyd, Maj. Guy (Renfrew, E.)
Teeling, W.


Cranborne, Viscount
Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)
Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. P. L. (Hereford)


Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C.
Lockwood, Lt.-Col. J. C.
Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Longden, Gilbert (Harts, S.W.)
Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)


Crouch, R. F.
Low, A. R. W.
Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R. (Croydon, W.)


Cuthbert, W. N.
Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)
Thorneycroft, R. Hn. Peter (Monmouth)


Darling, Sir William (Edinburgh, S.)
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.


Deedes, W. F.
McCallum, Major D.
Touche, G. C.


Dodds-Parker, A. D.
Macdonald, Sir Peter (I. of Wight)
Turton, R. H.


Donner, P. W.
McKibbin, A. J.
Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord Malcolm
McKie, J. H. (Galloway)
Vesper, D. F.


Drayson, G. B.
Maclean, Fitzroy
Ward, Hon. George (Worcester)


Drewe, C.
MacLeod, Iain (Enfield, W.)
Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)


Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.
Macpherson, Maj. Niall (Dumfries)
Wellwood, W.


Eccles, Rt. Hon. D. M.
Maitland, Comdr. J. F. W. (Horncastle)
Williams, Sir Herbert (Croydon, E.)


Eden, Rt. Hon. A.
Maitland, Patrick (Lanark)
Wills, G.


Fell, A.
Marlowe, A. A. H.
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Finlay, Graeme
Merples, A. E.



Fleetwood-Hesketh, R. F.
Marshall, Douglas (Bodmin)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Fletcher, Walter (Bury)
Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.
Brigadier Mackeson and




Major Conant.




NOES


Acland, Sir Richard
Burton, Miss F. E.
Foot, M. M.


Adams, Richard
Butler, Herbert (Hackney, S.)
Forman, J. C.


Attlee, Rt. Hon. C. R.
Callaghan, L. J.
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)


Awbery, S. S.
Castle, Mrs. B. A.
Freeman, Peter (Newport)


Bacon, Miss Alice
Champion, A. J.
Greenwood, Anthony (Rossendale)


Baird, J.
Chapman, W. D.
Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Arthur (Wakefield)


Balfour A.
Coldrick, W.
Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.


Bence, C. R.
Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Grey, C. F.


Benn, Wedgwood
Crossman, R. H. S.
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)


Beswick, F.
Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.
Griffiths, William (Exchange)


Bing, G. H. C.
Davies, A. Edward (Stoke, N.)
Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)


Blackburn, F.
Davies, Harold (Leek)
Hall, Rt. Hon. Glenvil (Colne Valley)


Blenkinsop, A.
Donnelly, D. L.
Hall, John (Gateshead, W.)


Blyton, W. R.
Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John (W. Bromwich)
Hannan, W.


Boardman, H.
Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.
Hargreaves, A.


Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.
Edelman, M.
Hayman, F. H.


Bowden, H. W.
Edwards, John (Brighouse)
Herbison, Miss M.


Bowles, F. G.
Edwards, Re. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Hobson, C. R.


Brook, Dryden (Halifax)
Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)
Holmes, Horace (Hemsworth)


Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)
Evans, Stanley (Wednesbury)
Houghton, Douglas


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Field, Capt. W. J.
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)


Burke, W. A.
Fletcher, Eric (Islington, E.)
Hynd, H. (Accrington)







Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)
Sylvester, G. O.


Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.
Paling, Will T. (Dewsbury)
Taylor, John (West Lothian)


Jeger, George (Goole)
Parker, J.
Taylor, Rt. Hon. Robert (Morpeth)


Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)
Plummer, Sir Leslie
Thomas, George (Cardiff)


Jones, David (Hartlepool)
Poole, C. C.
Timmons, J.


Jones, Jack (Rotherham)
Popplewell, E.
Webb, Rt. Hon. M. (Bradford, C.)


Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Porter, G.
Wheatley, Rt. Hon. John


Keenan, W.
Price, Joseph T. (Westhoughton)
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)


Kenyon, C.
Pryde, D. J.
White, Henry (Derbyshire, N.E.)


Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Richards, R.
Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W.


Lipton, Lt.-Col. M.
Robens, Rt. Hon. A.
Wigg, G. E. C.


Logan, D. G.
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.


MacColl, J. E.
Ross, William
Willey, Frederick (Sunderland, N.)


McKay, John (Wellsend)
Royle, C.
Williams, Ronald (Wigan)


MacMillan, M. K. (Western Isles)
Schofield, S. (Barnsley)
Williams, W. R. (Droylsden)


MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)
Shackleton, E. A. A.
Williams, W. T. (Hammersmith, S.)


Mellalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.
Wilson Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Mann, Mrs. Jean
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)
Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)


Manuel, A. C.
Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Mikardo, Ian
Slater, J.
Wyatt, W. L.


Morgan, Dr. H. B. W.
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)



Nally, W.
Snow, J. W.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Neal, Harold (Bolsover)
Steele, T.
Mr. Wilkins and


Oswald, T.
Stross, Dr. Barnett
Mr. Kenneth Robinson.


Paget, R. T.
Swingler, S. T.

Question, "That the Bill be now read the Third time," put accordingly, and agreed to.

Bill read the Third time, and passed.

Mr. Ellis Smith: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am not permitted, according to Standing Orders, to debate what I want to raise, but, with respect, I want to raise two or three issues for your consideration.

Mr. Speaker: I thank the hon. Member for his warning, but it puts me rather on the alert.

Mr. Smith: In spite of an all-night Sitting, it is obvious that you are on the alert, Mr. Speaker, and, in view of the grievances of our people so are we, although some of us have not received the legal training which other people have received.

Hon. Members: What does that mean?

Mr. Ross: We know injustice when we see it.

Mr. Smith: I think, Mr. Speaker, that for the future it is essential that it should go on record that you were good enough to be very tolerant with some of us when we were endeavouring to raise points of order and when my hon. Friends were taking advantage of covering their heads in accordance with Standing Orders. I did not do that, although I tried to raise a point of order in the way I am doing now.
According to my interpretation, I was correct, for the reason that when you put the Question it was obvious on this side that if you had collected the voices there

is no doubt what the result of that Division would have been. I am not in order in challenging you upon this point but, with respect, I am putting the matter to you in the hope that you will reconsider what took place. None of us was to blame; it may have been due to the atmosphere. But it was obvious that the Question was not carried and therefore, since serious grievances may arise in the future. I want to ask if you are still of the opinion that the Question was carried when it was put.

Mr. Speaker: The first time I collected the voices I said that the "Ayes" had it. Then, under Standing Orders, a period of two minutes had to elapse. I then put the Question again and announced the Tellers. On the second call it is sufficient if there is a division of opinion in the House, because the first voices have given the Speaker or the Chairman an idea from the volume of the preponderance of opinion in the House. I happened on this occasion—and perhaps this is an answer to the hon. Member—to hear a loud shout of "No" from that side, because there were a number of hon. Members drawing my attention to points of order and this side of the House was relatively empty. But I should have been quite wrong to rule that the "Noes" had it because the sound from over here was very faint and the sound from over there was very loud.

Mr. Smith: That is very fair, Sir, but may I, with respect, ask how many voices determine a Division?

Mr. Speaker: It is not really a matter of the number of voices. It is beyond


the Speaker's competence to judge from the volume of the sound how many people have contributed towards it, because voices vary. It is really a tradition from the old usages of Parliament when, frequently, Questions were decided by volume of sound. That has a long history probably going back to our Scandanavian past, but it is now a formality which enables a Division—a more practical way—to be instituted.
I ought to say to the House that when I had put the Closure a number of points of order were raised. I am told that, strictly speaking, I was exceeding the bounds of leniency in listening to them at all because the Standing Order is strict on the point that if the Speaker accepts the Motion it ought to be put forthwith. I hope, in view of what is in the mind of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) that that will not be taken as a precedent for the future.

Mr. Adams: On a point of order. May I develop further the point relating to the incident which occurred earlier? I wish to put to you a point of order following that raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) and relating to the same incident dealing with the Closure of the debate. I submit to you that at the moment when the Patronage Secretary rose in his place to claim to move the Closure, there were at least six or eight hon. Members on this side of the House, including myself, who rose to points of order. The point of order I want to put to you is this: at what stage, when it is sought to move the Closure, does an hon. Member fail to catch your eye in rising to a point of order?

Mr. Speaker: I will consider that point, but when the Motion for the Closure has been accepted by the Chair it must be put forthwith, without debate. For that purpose, points of order are debate.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I think that if hon. Members will think for a little longer over what we have been doing, they can put points of order to me on more mature consideration, but I decline to receive any more points or order at the present time.

Mr. Adams: rose—

Hon. Members: Sit down.

Mr. Adams: Further to my point of order. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I hope I am in order in submitting this to you, Sir, since I raised the original point of order. I hope it will be in order for me to put a consequential point of order to you.

Mr. Speaker: I really must say something about points of order. The real function of a point of order is to enable an hon. Member in any part of the House to draw the attention of the Chair to a breach of decorum or order which the Chair has not perceived. [An HON. MEMBER: "Or an injustice."] I have noticed a growing abuse of this custom. Hon. Members raise points of order and, of course, the Chairman or the Speaker has no idea what an hon. Member is going to say until he delivers himself; and in too many cases it is not a point of order at all but an attempt either to score a debating point or to delay the proceedings of the House.
I must ask for the co-operation of the House in this, and I can assure them that we shall get on much better together if we adhere to the long-established and honourable customs of the House. The Clerk will now proceed to read the Orders of the Day.

The remaining Orders were read and postponed.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Butcher.]

Mr. Shackleton: On a point of order. Mr. Speaker, I understood you to call for the Orders of the Day but neither I nor my hon. Friends heard them. I am quite sure about this, because I have been waiting and listening for the Clerk to read those Orders.

Mr. Speaker: It was not necessary for me to direct the Clerk to read the Orders of the Day because we have started doing that already. I have, however, given my firm Ruling—and it was not given without consideration—that we should pass on. I was merely expressing to the Clerk, as I was entitled to do, my opinion that he should call the next Order on the Order Paper.

Mr. Beswick: With respect, Mr. Speaker, may we have your guidance on


this point? I listened very carefully to what was said by both yourself and the Clerk, and at no point did I catch the name of one Bill. I heard you say, "Sir David Maxwell Fyfe," but I did not hear at any time any mention of the Army and Air Force (Annual) Bill.

Mr. Speaker: I just heard it. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] There was so much noise going on. I understand that the Order was read. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Order. The Order is now postponed and, therefore, there can be no discussion on it. It is not in order to discuss it now. Brigadier Prior-Palmer.

Brigadier O. L. Prior-Palmer: rose—

Mr. S. Silverman: On a point of order. I am afraid I have not followed you, Sir. I heard you call on the Clerk at the Table to read the Orders of the Day, and I heard certain Orders read. I heard the words "Sir David Maxwell Fyfe" and I heard the words "This day," and nothing whatever happened. May one ask what has happened to the Orders of the Day—the ones we are going to take this day? None of them has been put to the House.

Mr. Speaker: The next Order, after the one we had disposed of, which was the Army and Air Force (Annual) Bill, Second Reading—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I understand that it was called and postponed. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] Yes, I am told that that is what happened. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] Hon. Members cannot hold up the Business of the House by making a noise. It may have been difficult for hon. Members to hear what was said, but the position is that the Order for the Bill has been read and postponed to this day.

Mr. Ernest Popplewell: On a point of order. I understand that the Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Bill was carried without a Division. The next thing that took place, as far as I am aware, was the suggestion for Orders of the Day. I heard nothing except your observation and "Sir David Maxwell Fyfe." This was repeated on three occasions but at no time was the second Motion on Orders of the Day—the Army and Air Force (Annual) Bill read out.

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps I can explain that. The proper procedure, which I had to learn myself when I became Speaker, is that an Order like the Army and Air Force (Annual) Bill, which is No. 2 on the Order Paper, should not be read by the Speaker but by the Clerk. On the other hand, when it is a question of calling a Minister to move an Order, it is for the Speaker to call him. That is why hon. Members heard my voice saying "Sir David Maxwell Fyfe" and failed to hear the Clerk reading the Order. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] In any case it would be an abuse of the time of the House to discuss this, because the Army and Air Force (Annual) Bill is not before us. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] It has been postponed. [HON. MEMBERS: "When?"] Before this. [HON. MEMBERS: "When?"] Hon. Members apparently did not hear it being postponed, but it was postponed.

Mr. Popplewell: Further to my point of order. Do I now understand the position to be that the Army and Air Force (Annual) Bill has not been taken; it has been postponed until a later date?

Mr. Speaker: Yes.

Mr. Beswick: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Is the hon. Member wishing to discuss a point on the Army and Air Force (Annual) Bill? I rule now that any question relating to the Army and Air Force (Annual) Bill is out of order, because the Bill has been postponed.

Hon. Members: No.

Mr. Beswick: On a point of order. I am very anxious to understand properly the procedure of the House. I now understand you to say that the Title of any Bill—I am not referring necessarily to the Army and Air Force (Annual) Bill—is called not by you, but by the Clerk at the Table. I understand that; but do I understand from that that the House divides or expresses an opinion before you put the Question to the House? If so, might I ask whether, after the Clerk of the Table called the title of the Army and Air Force (Annual) Bill, you did then put the Question to the House?

Mr. Speaker: It is not so complicated as that. When the Clerk reads the Title


of the Bill it is competent for the Government to withdraw its Order by postponing it to a later date. That is what has been done in this case, and the Bill has been postponed.

Mr. Crookshank: On a point of order. Is it not the case that the raising of these points of order is taking away from the half-hour Adjournment debate, for which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer) has sat here the whole night?

Mr. Ross: That is not a point of order.

Mr. Crookshank: I am asking Mr. Speaker whether it is not the case that the half hour for the Adjournment debate is running against my hon. and gallant Friend.

Mr. Speaker: The half hour runs from the moment that the Motion for the Adjournment has been moved.

Mr. S. Silverman: On a point of order. I think that the difficulty that we are in, Mr. Speaker, is about the meaning of the words "This day." I think many of us heard someone on the Front Bench say, in response to your question, "This day." I think that the difficulty many of my hon. Friends are in is about the meaning of "This day" in the circumstances. I thought that the Rule of the House was that, since the House has been sitting all through the night, as we have done, "This day" is still Wednesday, because Wednesday's business has not been finished.

Mr. Speaker: "This day" means this calendar day—Thursday. I would ask the House to allow the hon. and gallant Gentleman to have his Adjournment debate, and not abuse points of order, which is not good in any circumstances. Brigadier Prior-Palmer.

Orders of the Day — CONSOLIDATED FUND (No. 2) BILL

Postponed proceeding on Question, "That the Bill be now read the Third time," resumed.

Question again proposed.

Orders of the Day — CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL WARDS (VISITS)

1.6 p.m.

Brigadier O. L. Prior-Palmer: After a long time I have the honour of raising on the Adjournment a matter which is of great concern to all who are interested in child welfare in this country, namely, the question of visiting in children's wards in hospitals.
I do not want in my speech to tread on anybody's corns, and I realise that this is a matter which must be approached with a sense of responsibility. I am not asking, nor would I ever think of asking, the Ministry to direct in any way hospital boards or hospital management committees in this matter, but the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health must not forget that they are not elected bodies. Therefore, public opinion does not have on them the effect that it has on elected bodies. It is only through the suggestions or influence of the Ministry itself that pressure of any sort can be brought to bear on them—although I do not suggest for a moment that the pressure should be strong.
There is a number of hospitals which have experimented with daily visiting in children's wards over a long period, although the majority of hospitals have not. That is the situation at the moment. It is interesting to note that, in my constituency, one reason for this experiment was that the hospital authorities had seen mothers standing on the saddles of their bicycles and peeping over the wall in the hope of getting a glimpse of their children. This experiment has continued for several years, and it is not the only hospital where it has been tried.
There are two main objections to daily visiting. One is infection and the other is disturbance. Let me speak about infection first. The arguments on this ground have not been sustained, for several reasons. One is that there is daily visiting in private wards without any detrimental effects. Another is that there are going into and out of the public wards laboratory assistants, cleaners, students, and of course the nurses themselves. The third and most important is that in 1945 the British Paediatric Association instituted an investigation and failed to find that there was any


correlation between visiting and cross-infection. The matron of Worthing hospital wrote in the "Nursing Times" recently that in not one single instance had infection been traced to visitors, yet, as I say, we have had this experiment for a considerable time In Worthing.
It is the objection on the grounds of disturbance that is more important. The question is whether or not this visiting daily has an adverse effect on the child, and whether, from this point of view, the visiting should be daily or once a week, and that is the matter about which I want to speak most. The argument in favour of the weekly visiting is that the child is more placid, more content and less emotionally upset than if it is visited daily by its mother. I assure the hon. Lady that those who say that come from hospitals that have never tried it, and who do not see the results on the children. The results are not apparent until the children have left the hospital. They have not seen the emotional, frozen aspect that lasts very often for nearly a week, the almost complete breakdown, the tearful clinging, the nightmares, the tantrums and the wetting of beds, all clearly the direct result of repression and frustration.
I know of a case of a child to whose mind irreparable damage has been done I do not believe she will ever recover from it. I know of another child who had an accident and went into hospital, where she was very restless. The nurses could not understand it and asked: "Is she always like this?" It was due to repression of the fear that the accident which caused her entry into hospital had been her own fault and after it had been explained that it was not, she became a perfectly peaceful, normal child. That would have continued if the parent had not been allowed to visit her on the next day. Sometimes damage is done by naughty children. I know of an odious boy who said to the child in the next cot: "You are never going to see your mother again. She will not come back to see you." That is absolutely true, and I know the effect upon a child's mind of being told those things.
These are isolated instances, and I know that one swallow does not make a drink, but they are indicative of what

goes on in many children's wards where daily visiting is not practised. Let us remember one very serious point. A day in the life of a very young child, say of three years old, is an age. If that is true of a whole long day, a week is quite incomprehensible.
There are various aspects of this matter. Some hospitals do one thing and some do another. Where there has been 100 per cent. success, there has been the rule that the mothers must be kept fully occupied during the time they are visiting. Otherwise the time palls, and the parents begin to look at their watches. It is most important that they should be engaged in doing the normal tasks that they would perform were the children at home. They should try not to break the continuity, but should be doing such things as changing the nappy, reading, prayers, tucking the child up in bed or, as is done in some hospitals, staying with the child until it has gone to sleep. Furthermore, it has been arranged that a doctor shall be there at visiting hours so that he can speak personally with the parents. The introduction of food into the hospital is forbidden and there are other rules and regulations.
This brings me to a point which I wish to stress very strongly. In the final analysis, the sister in charge of the children's ward must have a sanction to prohibit all visits from any parent whom she may think undesirable for any reason of undesirability. We know that there are undesirable parents. There are children who do not want to see their parents, and who are apt to say: "How soon is mummy going?" That is another aspect of the question. The sister in charge of the ward must have the final say in this matter. I am wholeheartedly behind that idea, and if it is carried out in a humanitarian way it leads to no difficulty or trouble.
It is idle to pretend that there are no difficulties. This is not a Utopian scheme. Perhaps a parent cannot get to the hospital. The Red Cross provide visitors for parents in those circumstances, and are willing to see a child every day. They have done that in the past. Also, parents who come to other children may know personally parents who cannot visit, and they can carry out the visiting function. This difficulty is not insuperable


because it has been overcome. The basic principle underlying this experiment, which is being carried out in various hospitals, is to continue the mother-child relationship, which is so essential to the mental welfare of a child, and not to destroy that sense of security and protection for which children crave, whether or not they show it.
In my view it is vital for the mental welfare of the young children in the future. Hospitals who have tried this have found it has been entirely successful. Dr. Parry, writing in the "Sussex Daily News "on 2nd December, 1949, says:
Where it has been tried it has been found such a brilliant success that it is difficult to understand the opposition to it.
I should like to stress the word "brilliant."
I feel that here we are firing a shot against juvenile delinquency. That is one of the matters which exercises the minds of all of us very much indeed. I wish to quote a case in which 44 juvenile delinquents were examined and it was discovered that the great majority of them were suffering from early separation from their parents, due in a large number of cases to entry into hospital.
There is one vitally important aspect which was stressed by Professor Moncrieff, who is at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London where this experiment is in operation. The preparation of the children by the parents for the "adventure" of entering hospital is tremendously important. It is of the greatest value to get the children into the right frame of mind when they are about to enter hospital, so that they know what to expect. I stress that point. I am not asking for a sudden swing. I want to see hospitals try this scheme and to increase its extent as they go along. I know that the Ministry sent out a circular two and a half years ago encouraging this system, but, as far as I can see, that circular has not yet had much effect.
I ask the hon. Lady whether she will do this. I assure her that I would do it if I were in her shoes. I ask her to circularise the regional boards and ask them for evidence from the hospitals which are trying this experiment; and to request that this evidence should be sent to her Department and have it consolidated into a concise statement. All I want her to

do is to send that evidence to all the hospitals which do not carry out this system. I do not want any coersion of any sort, but I think that if enlightened hospitals see that evidence they will change their minds. I ask her to add a fairly strong recommendation—rather stronger than that in the circular of two and a half years ago—that this should at least be tried as an experiment.

1.17 p.m.

Dr. Barnett Stross: I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will accept the request made by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer). I am sure that he has not exaggerated a single aspect of the matter. I am satisfied that granting what he has requested is the least we could do.
I urge the Parliamentary Secretary to remember that with all human beings the severing of the umbilical cord when we are born is something that happens only to the physical cord. The emotional, mental and spiritual cords that link us with our mothers when we are young wither away only as time goes on and we gain our strength. Every moment of time is an eternity to each and every child if it is taken away from the safety of its own background. What is being asked for is wholly right, and if it is not acceded to I shall feel that the House is not doing its duty.

1.18 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Miss Patricia Hornsby-Smith): I should like to thank my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer) for the very fair manner in which he has presented this most human problem. I assure him that it has the fullest sympathy of our Ministry. As he said, the practice varies in hospitals from complete prohibition on visiting to daily visiting in children's wards. He has put very fairly the arguments, which we accept, in favour of visiting. The psychological disturbance which he mentioned, particularly in the toddler stage when children through some accident or other illness, are separated for the first time from their parents, may be both serious and long lasting.
There is another side, and that is the strain on the parents who suddenly have


removed from their care the young child whom they regard so dearly and whom they feel most concerned about. There is also the disturbance to children when visits are prohibited, especially when the period may run into weeks, and on return the parents find that there has been a natural development of the possessive attitude on the part of the nursing staff.
At the same time, we recognise the arguments against visiting. It is said on behalf of those hospitals which make this prohibition that it upsets the children, that it may spread infection, that it wastes the time of the staff, and that it upsets the hospital routine. We do not think that the evidence that we have seen, especially that concerning the last two considerations, can be regarded as decisive.
In the experience of those hospitals which have undertaken to allow visiting, we believe that when the children are visited it helps if the parents can stay, if it is an evening visit, until the children are asleep. The parents will return next day, and after the initial visit the child will get used to seeing its parents return. I agree with the remarks quoted by my hon. and gallant Friend, referring to the report of the British Pediatric Association who said that from all the evidence that they have collected they could find no correlation between visiting and cross-infection. I agree with him, for example, when he says that a parent with an obviously severe or streaming cold should not be allowed permission to enter if the sister thinks that such a visit is not in the best interests of the child.
We are aware of the most interesting and successful experiments carried out in the Sussex Hospital. There the nursing and the medical staff were reluctantly persuaded to try this experiment. As my hon. and gallant Friend said, they have been completely converted, and it is largely on the persuasion of the medical and nursing staff that this new principle has been accepted by other hospitals in the same group.
There has been a full investigation and report in the "British Medical Journal," in respect of the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, which is renowned nationally and internationally for its work in the care of sick children. There they have expanded the method

to a visit each evening. They have done everything in their power to maintain a really human touch whereby the mother visits each evening, helps in giving the child its supper, may read to it, clean its teeth and may even wait until it goes to sleep before she leaves. The experiment has been wholly successful and is generally accepted by the hospital. They have even made provision for substitutes where the mother cannot attend. The mother of one child will look after the toddler of a mother who cannot attend on that evening. We believe that the experiment has been of great value and that it has proved the greatest success.
As my hon. and gallant Friend said, the advice of the Central Health Service Council was sought by the Minister in 1949. We have been told that they found an unjustifiably wide variation in the practice in different hospitals, and they recommended that hospitals should be asked to adopt a less rigid attitude in this matter. At the same time, we were anxious—and I am glad that my hon. and gallant Friend agrees with us on this point—that there should be no attempt widely to impose or to formulate precise rules which must be carried out by the separate hospitals. We believed that the most we should do was to advise the hospital authorities, under adequate safeguards, to allow parents or guardians to visit children with reasonable frequency and, if necessary, by appointment.
That recommendation was circulated by the Minister to the hospital management committees and to the boards of governors, and they were asked to review the systems in operation within their own hospitals. I have no information as to the extent of the operation of that circular, but I do not think that it has been quite as unsuccessful as the hon. and gallant Gentleman suggested, in that no hospital has amended its regulations since its circulation.
I think that I can give the hon. and gallant Gentleman better news than that. Certainly some relaxation has been allowed in several hospitals in the country. At the same time, we believe that the advice given by the Central Council, and accepted by the Ministry, is one in the best interests of the child and the mother. We believe that it is very advisable that hospitals which still prohibit this method should take advice and


guidance from those who have tried it, and themselves make a similar experiment to see whether they cannot relax their rules and allow this visiting to their children's wards.
It is 2½ years, as the hon. and gallant Gentleman pointed out, since this recommendation was sent out. I should like to inform him now that we propose to follow up the recommendation by calling

on the hospital authorities to furnish a report to the Ministry on what steps they are taking, what methods they are using, and to what extent they are implementing the recommendation.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-seven Minutes past One o'Clock p.m., 27th March, 1952.